ENVIRONMENTAL POLLUTION AND PLANNED OBSOLESCENCE

Planned obsolescence involves deliberately designing consumer products with a short life span and using the subliminal power of the media to influence consumer behavior, enticing them to keep buying newer models to generate uninterrupted profit. While this business strategy has greatly contributed to technological innovations, it has also produced dangerous levels of environmental pollution. The direct connection between planned obsolescence and environmental pollution was rarely addressed in scholarly discourses, despite the fact that planned obsolescence was adopted as a successful business model nearly 100 years ago. Using the example of personal digital devices, which have become essential possessions of modern life, the presentation examines the origin, history, and indiscriminate acceptance of the planned obsolescence philosophy by manufacturers of consumer products-notably the electronics industry-and explains how it has resulted in serious degradation of the global environmental quality. The combined threat arising out of the increasing quantity of electronic waste and its environmentally unsafe management pose a formidable challenge to both the developed and the developing countries the world over. A case study to illustrate the adverse impacts on human and ecological health caused by informal recycling of e-waste and possible solutions to this vexing problem are included in the presentation.