<story><title>EU Parliament calls for longer lifetime for products</title><url>http://www.eubusiness.com/news-eu/durable-products.47bf</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>lumberjack</author><text>Wages have gone up and consumer goods have gone down in price and build quality. It&amp;#x27;s not feasible to have a repair business any more. Growing up, there were still loads of repair businesses around. You could fix anything.&lt;p&gt;If build quality and price go up, you can revert to an economy where you would fix your broken appliance once or twice before you replacing it.&lt;p&gt;But what&amp;#x27;s the incentive for the manufacturers?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Someone</author><text>If there was a clear incentive, the EU parliament probably wouldn&amp;#x27;t ask for one to be created (&lt;i&gt;&amp;quot;Europe&amp;#x27;s Parliament called on the Commission, Member States and producers Tuesday to take measures to ensure consumers can enjoy durable, high-quality products that can be repaired and upgraded.&amp;quot;&lt;/i&gt;)&lt;p&gt;If followed up, this could end up the same as with lead-free soldering. There weren&amp;#x27;t good incentives for manufacturers to remove lead from soldering until the EU passed the RoHS directive (&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Restriction_of_Hazardous_Substances_Directive&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Restriction_of_Hazardous_Subst...&lt;/a&gt;) and, subsequently, laws were introduced to implement it throughout the EU.</text></comment>
<story><title>EU Parliament calls for longer lifetime for products</title><url>http://www.eubusiness.com/news-eu/durable-products.47bf</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>lumberjack</author><text>Wages have gone up and consumer goods have gone down in price and build quality. It&amp;#x27;s not feasible to have a repair business any more. Growing up, there were still loads of repair businesses around. You could fix anything.&lt;p&gt;If build quality and price go up, you can revert to an economy where you would fix your broken appliance once or twice before you replacing it.&lt;p&gt;But what&amp;#x27;s the incentive for the manufacturers?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>patkai</author><text>If they changed to a service model they would have an incentive. If they leased a dishwasher 5€&amp;#x2F;month suddenly it wouldn&amp;#x27;t break for 15 years. Ten years ago I talked to a person in aerospace, he said they would change to a service model similar to jet engines, but since customers don&amp;#x27;t push them, they will wait it out.</text></comment>