Task 2b:Sustainable consumption

Reflection : The story of electronics and Life psycle-ology

After watching short video of "Life psycle-ology" and "The story of electronics"，it gives me good understanding of how the e-product's made and seriously effecting our daily life and the environment. In another hand these two video shows how evil the manufacturer just focus on profits and not considering the impact of worker, consumer and the environment.

In the video "the story of electronics" it tells how the design is toxic for the people and the planet. Usually i will buy new stuff when the market advertise new attractive product which it draws my attention or some time when the old one is no long to use, when these product get old i throw them into garbage bin, i never think about how waste i am and never know how these throw away product end up to. But the video tells me the true, the way that i am doing is not correct, i shouldn't be attracted by the new product, i should consider more about do i really need it.

Also the video educated my knowledge of marketing. the manufacturer's key strategy for the company is to sale more, make the product thrown away quickly then they can make out of profit.

Today's electronics that we use every day (such as computers, cell phones, tv) are hard to upgrade, easy to break and impractical to repair. also the manufacturer's using lots of toxic chemicals to produce the product such as pvc, mercury, solvents and flame retardants which these chemical will harm to the worker health and environment. the impact of these product is end up become the mountains of e-waste. the impact report shows that "each year we make 25 millon tons of e-waste which gets dumped,burned or recycled". How scary is that.

As an design student i think is the time to say no to "toxics in and toxics out". the most effective way to reduce the impact on the environment is to integrate environmental considerations into the product development process. to do this, we must consider the environmental impact of materials, energy and toxicity across an e-product's entire life cycle. we can make the product more modular, when one part broke can use new piece to repair, also can make product longer lasting, toxic free and can be recycle.