Disposable

I bought a new printer the other day; nice little wifi HP job that has a scanner built into it and a cute colour touch screen on the front.

I needed a new printer because my old one (which I blogged about getting) has started putting random splodges of colour on every printed page, even after running the cleaning routine. Now back in the old days printers were quite pricey pieces of kit that if it broke would probably be worth repairing. Not so now; if I were to even try and get the old printer fixed it would cost me almost as much as a new one just in postage to send it off and 58 quid gets me a brand new faster, shinier printer delivered so it's a no-brainer.

But I looked at the old printer this morning, sat in the "must take this crap to the tip sometime" along with the coffee machine that started leaking scalding arabica over the kitchen work surfaces, and wondered how much longer this consume - dispose - consume can continue. I'm no eco-weenie but it's galling to see that this lump of plastic and glass is going to end up in a landfill somewhere (it's probably not even cost effective to recover any metal from it) when it's probably just a tiny cheap part that needs replacing.

I am consuming less and I certainly don't go in for this "must have the latest shiny iToy" nonsense but even if I wanted to Hewlett Packard have made sure I'll not be fixing my own printer as it appears to have been glued together. The same goes for Apple's impenetrable products where you can't even replace the sodding battery.

The message is clear. Buy a new one. "Make do and mend" is dead.