The sustainability of ‘out of sight and out of mind’

Image source: Creative Commons cdsessums/Foter/Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-SA 2.0)

One strategy for living a sustainable life is buying and owning less stuff. As a result, are more and more people turning to renting or leasing? Do people perceive temporary use of something as more sustainable than ownership? This can apply to housing, cars, pets, music and movies, even handbags! As I see it, there are several drivers: cost, convenience and technology. Is it cheaper to buy or rent your latest electronic gizmo? I guess it depends on how long you keep it. Did your phone work perfectly well when you upgraded last time? How about that latest Apple computer or iPad? Usually most folks buy and hold onto to them until they start to fail or a better model comes out. Most small electronic devises at this point are purchased not rented, but as the ownership cycle gets shorter, should you rent your next phone?

But what of larger investments? What about a car, if you need one? Buy or lease? Years ago one would research reliability ratings and dealer satisfaction because you imagined you might keep your car 10 years or more, hoping it doesn’t fall apart before you are finished with it. But cars are changing as fast as your laptop these days. Technological advances around engine management and emissions control, driver aids in terms of self-parking, blind spot detection, heads up displays on the windshield all evolve with each new model on an almost yearly basis. These new cars are not cheap to purchase and as they become more complicated, they presumably become more expensive to maintain. Then there is the question of insurance. So maybe one chooses to lease a car for 3 years, worrying less about reliability because it will be covered under the warrantee as long as you have it. Then move onto the next car with more bells and whistles for the next 3 years, the previous car is then ‘out of sight and out of mind’ and who cares about long term reliability.

Or better yet, use Zipcar or the like and borrow by the hour. Gone are the carrying costs and associated depreciation or insurance hassles, let the rental company deal with that. Or go all the way to Uber, rent by the minute, sit back and enjoy a carefree ride! Leave the headaches to the driver. These sorts of services are becoming the norm is some urban environments and presumably more sustainable for the consumer. Will American cities see a reduction in individual car ownership? We are already seeing a decline in young people getting drivers licenses; will automatous cars be the answer to traffic congestion and pollution in our cities? But who is going to own and maintain all those self-driving cars anyway? Car manufacturing companies? Car rental companies?

Image source: Creative Commons via budamoto.com

But is all this sustainable in the big picture? What are the downstream impacts of this approach? Sure, you can get a new electronic gizmo every 2-3 years, but what happens to the old one, assuming it still works. Sold on to someone who is willing to live without the latest technology, or to someone who can’t afford the latest thing? Put on a boat and shipped to a third world country ultimately to be recycled. Lease a car for 3 years, what happens to it after that? Is it sold on the second hand market to folks looking for a deal, or again, who can’t afford new? Is this the new cycle of life for our consumer products, multiple owners?

Are we moving towards a culture of short-term use of items that live on beyond our immediate need? Are we assuming a downstream market to absorb all these hand-me-downs? After the second owner, is the item sold on yet again or just recycled to start the process all over again? So why build anything to last if the initial purchaser doesn’t keep very long? This may be okay if you are at the top of the consumer class structure, maybe not so much at the bottom when the product finally fails. Will a system emerge that ultimately promotes a tiered class of consumers? Or is that system already in place? But with the increasing turnover of new improved products, phones, computers, digital watches, Fitbits, almost any electronic entertainment system, we are creating second hand products at an alarming rate as technology renders products obsolete before they wear out.

But what of the ‘sharing economy’? New stuff, shared by multiple users, is surely sustainable. In the end we would be producing less stuff, no second hand market, just everyone ‘renting’ whatever it is you need for a short period of time and passing it on. However, other than something like Uber can you name any product you ‘time share’ with multiple other people? If you are a skier, do you have your own skis, or do you rent on the slopes? Joining a gym maybe a better example, how many people have their own personal gyms? But if you could afford it, would you? Plenty of home gyms advertised on the TV, and most of them slip neatly under your bed. Unfortunately for the ‘sharing economy,’ if you can afford to own anything and we generally do.

On the other hand, technology has given us a perception of sustainability. When was the last time you bought a CD or a DVD? We can stream almost every form of entertainment – no more piles of metal discs or tapes – progress! Ah, but what of all those data farms, out of sight and out of mind, sucking up vast amounts of energy. At least streaming is probably a better approach in the end, no landfills full of deleted electronic files.

So hopefully more and more of our ‘disposable’ short-term use products will be easily recycled. Our new ‘rent a world’ lifestyle will be sustainable in a way that doesn’t create haves and have nots. But until then, is it still more sustainable to … Buy something, look after it and keep it for a longer period of time?
Keep it until it is ready to be recycled and avoid the second and third market run around? Or, on the other hand, embrace the second hand market, buy a 3 year old car, shop at thrift stores, buy second-hand furniture and call them ‘collectibles.’ Be part of the hand-me-down world before it is recycled? Maybe a bit of both?

Just like thinking global and buying local do we also now have to think global and rent local? Ultimately there is no ‘out of sight and out of mind’ for those who think sustainably. Every interaction, even short-term use, with a product or service has a carbon footprint of sorts. Downstream implications are not always obvious, particularly if you hand it on. So is short-term use (renting or leasing) more sustainable than buying? Maybe it’s not such a clear-cut decision after all.