Insights · Opinion
The true conspiracy of planned obsolescence.
Planned obsolescence started as a story about optimism and jobs. It's ended up as a story about landfill. The failure isn't the idea — it's the missing plan for what happens next.
By Brian O'Reilly · CEO, EGG Lighting
The core point
Obsolescence isn't the problem. Designing without a plan for what happens next is.
Where it started
1932: an idea sold as optimism.
During the Great Depression of 1932 planned obsolescence found its champion. Bernard London published his essay, "Ending the Depression Through Planned Obsolescence." The essay invoked economic optimism based on advances in manufacturing and agriculture. Planned obsolescence was associated with choice, jobs, innovation, value engineering and a thriving economy.
Unfortunately, planned obsolescence has now come to signify vast landfills, impractical products and the pollution of our environment. In economic terms, it's associated with big businesses making profit at the cost of the environment and hoodwinking consumers into buying things they don't need. A far cry from what the original proponents envisaged.
- 01
Bad obsolescence
Cosmetic changes that improve neither utility nor performance — "pseudo-functional obsolescence". Change for the sake of a new SKU.
- 02
Good obsolescence
"Value engineering": use as little material as possible while delivering an acceptable lifespan. Well suited to hi-tech goods, and it fosters continuous innovation.
The analogy
Obsolescence has a place. A bit like cholesterol, there's a good type and a bad type. The problem isn't that products end — it's that nobody's decided in advance what "end" is supposed to look like.
The real failure
Nobody planned for what happens next.
In my view, the main failure of planned obsolescence is the lack of planning around what happens to a product when it's deemed obsolete. It still exists as a product — so what happens next?
"Reuse it" or "recycle it" is the stock response. But often that's very impractical and takes more time, effort, cost and energy than making a new one. Reuse and recycle are useful end-of-life concepts, but execution routinely fails in technology products — phones, cars, PCs — because end-of-life is an afterthought.
What consumers can do
Buying a product is a vote for the product.
As consumers, we can support this design effort with purchasing power. Buying a product is like a vote for the product. Without sufficient votes, it fails.
The challenge lies around getting the right product information into the public domain so that we can make informed votes. We can't leave it in the hands of marketing execs, who often appeal to our faculty for making irrational decisions.
That's why we back methods like TM66 and TM65. Not because a certificate saves the planet, but because published methods put comparable information into buyers' hands — and that's what turns a vote into an informed one.
If you're sitting on an estate full of "obsolete" lighting, the first question isn't what to buy. It's what's actually worth keeping. Start with a Lighting Decision Audit.
Conversation, not tender
Start with a conversation.
No tender process required. No sales pressure. A straight answer about what your estate is worth.