DISPOSABLE APPLIANCES?
Modern versions just don’t last as long as their sturdy predecessors.
Ijust replaced my microwave oven for the second time in less than three years. This particular machine outlasted its warranty by a few months.
By contrast, my grandmother bought one of the first commercially available microwaves back in the 1970s, a machine so durable that after a decade of service it was passed down to my mom, who used it daily for another 20 years.
We had a fridge in the basement of my childhood home that looked like it was built in the ’40s. It never broke down once. I’m sure that we eventually called in BC Hydro to have it put down.
Back in the day, so- called durable goods were, well, durable. It wasn’t unusual for a quality washing machine to last 20 or 30 years. (No surprise that Whirlpool and Maytag manufactured military components and ordnance during the Second World War.)
The indestructible washer or fridge has become the stuff of myth and legend. When BC Hydro challenged customers to share stories of relic fridges in 2009, they unearthed a working model from the 1930s.
Well, welcome to the modern world.
“The way they built appliances even 25 years ago is nothing like they build them today,” said Steve Edgar, a senior manager for Coast Appliances. “Appliances today last about 10 years, but 25 or 30 years ago it was more like 20 to 25 years. It’s not a myth at all.”
“Appliances look better today, but they don’t hold up,” said Edgar.
Edgar’s assertion is more than a fond memory. The National Association of Homebuilders supplied me with two studies — from 1993 and 2007 — that provide a snapshot of appliance longevity, and the results are clear. The expected lifespan of every major appliance dropped over that period by eight to 31 per cent.
Kitchen stoves, refrigerators and clothes washers were the worst hit, but dishwashers and water heaters weren’t that far behind. Microwave ovens and dryers dropped by less than 10 per cent.
Cause and effect
Two powerful forces are driving this descent into mediocrity.
One is price pressure. Most people don’t want to pay big bucks anymore, even for quality.
The price of a washing machine in 1950 was pretty close to the monthly income of a salaryman, the equivalent today of around $4,000. Needless to say, people expected those machines to last forever, said Edgar.
“Today, the main thing that sells appliances is looks. Very few customers ask about longevity,” he explained. “They will buy extended warranties, though, because they are replacing an appliance that’s only five years old and they are appalled it didn’t last very long.”
Consumers are also much quicker to scrap a broken-down appliance when the cost of a repair is often close to the price of a new unit.
“Labour is really expensive and then there are the parts,” said Edgar. “It’s often cheaper to just buy a new one.”
The general rule of thumb is to replace if the repair bill will exceed 50 per cent of the price of a new machine. The new machine will almost always be more efficient and therefore cheaper to run. But efficiency is a double-edged sword and the drive for increased energy efficiency may also be contributing to declining appliance longevity, Edgar said.
EnerGuide labelling and Energy Star efficiency standards — adopted by Canada in 1978 and 2001 respectively — have been spectacularly successful at reducing the electricity consumption of household appliances.
But efficiency comes with a cost: lighter materials and higher- efficiency motors all conspire to reduce the life of your appliance.
“It’s horrible,” said Matt Little of B-Line Appliance Recycling, who believes the appliance industry has descended into a system of planned obsolescence.
British Columbians recycle roughly 375,000 major appliances each year, likely between 95 and 99 per cent of all end-of-life appliances entering the waste stream. ASSOCIATION OF HOME APPLIANCE MANUFACTURERS OF CANADA AND THE RETAIL COUNCIL OF CANADA, IN A REPORT TO B.C. MINISTRY OF ENVIRONMENT
“Energy Star was created with the best intentions, but it has evolved into a situation in which manufacturers are just trying to get the (Energy Star) sticker rather than making more efficient machines,” Little said. “So, now you have fridges that are the same size, but with a much smaller compressor that will last five or 10 years rather than 20 to 30.”
Little collects old machines for recycling and rebuilds the better machines by cannibalizing parts from other similar models.
“Manufacturers don’t want you to fix them, so they make the parts unavailable, that way people buy new machines,” he said.
Edgar was only slightly more charitable in his assessment.
“Manufacturers get all kinds of pressure from the government to be more efficient,” said Edgar. “But in the end, they just wear out quicker.”
A 2012 report by Natural Resources Canada says the energy requirement of an Energy Star clothes washer is one-quarter that of standard machines made 10 years earlier.
Top-rated refrigerators and dishwashers have also made big efficiency gains. A suite of appliances purchased in 2010 uses roughly half as much electricity as the same set purchased in 1990, the report states.
However, at least some of the money you save on your power bill, you will spend to replace appliances more often.
A word to the wise: Keep your warranty information handy. You might need it sooner than you think.
Replace or wait?
If the energy savings are so awesome, should you junk working appliances and cut your power bill?
This is an argument you see trotted out quite regularly in the environmental press, but it’s not quite that simple.
If super-efficient appliances cost more to buy, it might be decades before you make up the savings on your BC Hydro bill. Despite Hydro’s two-tier rate structure — meant to motivate conservation — electricity is very cheap in this province.
Not only that, it has a minuscule carbon footprint compared with coal- fired electricity in much of the rest of North America. Upgrading from a 25-year- old fridge to a nice Energy Star model could cut your power consumption by as much as 55 per cent, according to BC Hydro figures, a saving of 425 kilowatt hours per year, or $50 at Hydro’s top tier rate. So, let’s try some simple math. If you apply for BC Hydro’s top rebate of $100 for a new fridge, if you choose a brand that qualifies for a manufacturer rebate and if you live in Richmond — which matches Hydro’s rebate — you can deduct $300 from your purchase price. After rebate, a middle-price Energy Star qualified Bosch refrigerator will cost roughly $2,099.
It will take you until the year 2155 to recoup your investment at today’s electricity prices, but after that: Let the savings begin!
Even spending an extra few hundred dollars on a high-efficiency appliance could take years to pay off in dollars, possibly longer than the expected service life of the machine.
The real payoff from BC Hydro’s perspective is conservation, or demand side management. You know it by its brand name, PowerSmart, a gaggle of programs meant to help us cut our power consumption.
By reducing demand, Hydro reduces the need to invest quite as much money in new capacity by deferring the need to build power-generating stations and dams, which run into the billions of dollars.
Because I’m a communityminded guy and wouldn’t want to see any more dams blocking our rivers than is absolutely necessary, I buy Energy Star appliances, but I’m not fooling myself about the savings. Paying more for greater efficiency benefits Hydro more than it does the consumer.
Costs of replacing?
But I wonder, too, about the environmental costs of shorter appliance life. Does it cost more energy to replace new appliances than it does to run a heavy-duty model built to last longer? What if we are saving energy in a lowcarbon environment that is being spent on coal-fired energy in smelters and manufacturing plants in China or Ohio?
BC Hydro couldn’t answer my questions.
But according to Statistics Canada, the energy, water and vehicle fuel costs for manufacturing appliances amount to less than 10 per cent of the total cost of production, which you likely save back within months or a few years of operation.
On the downside, if your appliance or its parts are made in China or Ohio, the carbon intensity of the coal-fired electricity used in its manufacture could be 10 to 40 times greater than power in B.C., Quebec or even Ontario, which just closed its last coal-fired power plant.
You could easily forfeit the environmental benefits of buying energy-efficient appliances by picking the wrong brand. And with thousands of pages of arcane graphs and numbers to pore over in your decision-making process, good luck deciding on the right brand. If you figure it out, let me know.