Planned obsolescence, upheld through the IP regime, leads to waste, extraction, and environmental destruction

There are numerous factors that contribute to, and drive, extractivism, production, consumption and waste, including wider capitalist and regulatory incentives, or indeed regulatory capture and failure. Another significant aspect is product or planned obsolescence, which creates demand—by design—to produce new products and contributes to the extraction of new raw materials and a steady stream of waste (Satyro et al. 2018; Brisman and South 2014). There are four types of product obsolescence: technological or functional where a product becomes obsolete due to enhanced technology; style obsolescence where products are designed so the consumer purchases a more fashionable product; systemic obsolescence where a wider system is altered so it is difficult to use or maintain services for a product; and, product failure and breakdown (Guiltinan 2009; Rivera and Lallmahomed 2016). Forms of product failure or breakdown are an explicit design strategy to shorten the lifespan of a product so it becomes non-functional. As a result, consumers purchase new replacement products and thus contribute to extraction, production, consumption—all required to fuel the growth of the capitalist economy.

Planned obsolescence can also involve intentionally designing for limited repair opportunities so products must be replaced entirely rather than fixed (by the consumer, manufacturer or a third party). The first, and perhaps most (in)famous, case of planned obsolescence is the intentional design of a lightbulb so that the filament has a limited lifetime and eventually becomes useless requiring complete replacement of the globe, where there are longer-lasting alternatives (Guiltinan 2009; Rivera and Lallmahomed 2016). Intentionally shortening the lifespan of products by design or intellectual property stipulations, especially electronic and digital devices, has significant environmental impacts as more waste is created and needs to be disposed of. New products are produced and these require the extraction of materials from the earth and the sea.

This explicit strategy to drive extraction, consumption and waste creation is supported by intellectual property laws that provide limited rights for consumers to repair broken or nonfunctional products themselves (or by third parties). As an example to illustrate how corporations deny consumers their right to repair (Hernandez et al. 2020), we point to agricultural technology (AgTech) company John Deere, which received negative press internationally for preventing farmers from repairing their own tractors (Carolan 2018). There has been some attempts to introduce or enforce ‘right to repair’ laws, for example in the United States (US), that would allow consumers to be able to repair products, however, their introduction has been delayed as a result of lobbying by manufacturers that argue they contravene their intellectual property rights (Grinvald and Tur-Sinai 2019; Montello 2020). Another example is Apple—a company that explicitly brands itself as ‘officially in the green.’ Apple has been successful in lobbying against proposed right to repair laws across the US and Canada (see, e.g., Hollister 2019; Owen 2019). So, while on one hand Apple runs ‘greenwashed’ campaigns about its environmental efforts and credentials, on the other, it scuttles laws that aim to reduce needless and wasteful consumption. This is in addition to its efforts to design components for its products that are difficult to repair or replace (for example, batteries that are glued in, the use of proprietary screws that only Apple (or authorised third parties) can unscrew (see e.g. Statt 2017). All of this contributes to more mining of rare minerals for new batteries or electronic components, more e-waste that is dumped rather than recycled, repaired or reused, and ultimately more environmental harm.