"The Story of Electronics: Why ''Designed for the Dump'' is Toxic for People and the Planet"

"The Story of Stuff Project" series of Team video productions is a Non-Profit Activism Movement designed to draw the attention to many the Environmental, Green, and Sustainability issues surrounding our modern-day "Planned Obsolescence" cycle of Consumer Goods Manufacturing, Consumption, and Disposal.

Team:
+Ms. Annie Leonard
+Free Range Studios (www.freerange.com)
+Electronics Takeback Coalition (www.electronicstakeback.com)
+Taiwan Watch Institute (www.taiwanwatch.org.tw)
+Taiwan Association of Translation & Interpretation (www.tati.org.tw providing Chinese/Taiwanese subtitles)

New cell phones last no more than a year, then we dispose of them and go off to buy yet another of the latest electronics gadget yet again? Are you really anxious to grab latest model, or is it because your phone has failed prematurely yet again -- being much more expensive to repair than buying a new one? No matter what consumer electronics products we apply this vicious cycle of consumption to, we are being deceived and forced towards consuming products that are designed to deliberately fail as part of the product/process/consumption/disposal life cycle -- and to get consumers to continuously sustain this vicious cycle of consumption, to maintain the profit income of an endless supply of manufacturers (they themselves poisoning their own workers). Today many consumer products are designed as "Planned Obsolescence", that are intentionally designed to be neither durable nor tolerant to repair, and difficult to upgrade. In addition from time to time the launch of newly introduced latest gadgets with the "appearance" of better functionality are only slightly better with the newer models, so we naively chase the “latest and greatest popular fad” product just introduced, perpetuating the vicious Product Consumption cycle even further.

In “The Story of Electronics: Why ‘‘Designed for the Dump’’ is Toxic for People and the Planet”, Ms. Annie Leonard carefully looks to explore this “deliberately designed products to throw away cycle”, respectively starting from extraction to production to consumption to waste and what are all the problems that arise. If we purchase the latest new "iPhone", "iPod", "iPad" after using and disposing of them, then a new set of problems is created since we don’t want large land fills and dumps here at home in the USA, we export our unwanted garbage from these disposable consumer products to China, India, Africa and even in Taiwan, where we dump on them the threat of dangerous pollution caused by our toxic products (while poisoning their people and children as well).

Listen to Ms. Annie Leonard, and join her in action!