I have spent my entire life in and around the consumer electronics service industry. Consumer Electronics, you know those things that make our lives more bright and shiny and noisy and interesting.

TV's, Tivos, Cams, Computers, Printers, Alarm Clocks, Radio's, Shavers, Telephones, Cell Phones, etc.

Heck! Just look around!

Right now in the United States there is no mandate for equipment manufacturers to supply ANY replacement parts, service, support or end of life plan for their products. We've all experienced it! You buy a cool, new, latest got to have it gadget and 3 days after the warranty expires...POOF! Up in smoke! Then what? Well most electronic repair shops are a thing of the past. Take my word for it. And if you do find someone to try to fix it, after you add the labor and parts ...well you might as well buy a new one anyway.

Warranty times are becoming shorter and shorter (i.e.: 30 days on Labor, 90 days on parts on that new $1000.00 TV). Extended warranties aren't worth the powder to blow them to hell with because parts can't be gotten. Equipment manufacturers hold service literature, service codes and parts as proprietary information. They only make enough parts to supply the manufacturing process. Most manufacturers will swap the unit under warranty and scrap the return for parts. The fact is that they consider their products to be throwaway. Yep, that beautiful new $2000 Plasma is throwaway but they won't admit to it until after it's out of warranty.

This new supply chain is called "Reverse Logistics" and it works just fine, unless you have a massive failure of a single component... which happens all too often...oh and IF you're willing to take used parts to fix your gizmo....with no guarantee, then you're golden. If not..well then relatively new equipment is discarded as junk clogging the already choked recycle chain. Or even worse, they're just tossed in the landfill.

In 2003, the United States alone generated 2.8 million tons of electronic waste and only recovered (re-used or recycled) 290 thousand tons, leaving the rest to enter into the municipal waste stream (EPA 2003).

Oh you might well say why don't I use your old gizmo for parts? A couple reasons the first being that your gadget probably broke for the same reason that everyone else's did. So the chance I would need your remaining parts for anything is pretty small. But apart from that I am not in the recycle business.

Are you worried about greenhouse gasses and global warming? How about groundwater contamination? Do you have any idea how much NF3 (nitrogen triflouride) is released into the atmosphere during the production of your fancy new LCD or Plasma flat panel? And guess what? NF3 is not covered by the Kyoto Protocol. Why? Because when Kyoto was negotiated no one knew that it existed and as it turns out it's 17000 times more damaging than CO2, 5000 times more than Methane. And NF3 production is expected to double from 2008 levels by next year.

They call NF3 the "missing greenhouse gas" because it's not covered under the Kyoto Protocol -- the international agreement established to help reduce greenhouse gas emissions. When the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change adopted the treaty in 1997, NF3 was produced only in small quantities, primarily for rocket fuel and lasers
Your Flatscreen Has Greenhouse Gas

Other things contained in your "Disposable" technology. Arsenic, Cadmium, Mercury, Zinc, Lead, Aluminum, PCBs, Nickel, Phosphates.

So no matter if you're just an average consumer or worried about the future of the planet it is a good idea to support some kind of legislation to require Electronic manufacturers to support what they create and institute a practical "End of Life" plan for disposal of the debris of our throwaway society.

I hope that this gets done, soon, while there are still people left with the skills to do the jobs. But I'm not holding my breath.

http://earthtrends.wri.org/features/view_feature.php?theme=3&fid=66

http://www.alternet.org/environment/95111/your_flat_screen_has_(greenhouse)_gas/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_logistics

I think I've been getting tooo serious around here lately. Sorry.

A couple of weeks ago Marquisdejolie made a comment on one of my videos saying

"Can you do one (a song) about cutting off your beard so your dog's fleas won't have anywhere else to hide but in your sister's armpit where they came from originally"?

Well since it was late in the evening and I was enjoying some chemically induced "happy" at the time, I was more than happy to oblige.

I wrote this song and passed it on to James to do with as he pleases! And he pleased to do a very funny thing!

Check it out!