Topic: EU Looks to Ban Toasters, Kettles and Hair Dryers to Stem Global Warming - page 2. (Read 2300 times)

There are some different, more subtle issues there, as the battle against "planned obsolescence" is an ongoing one. Fluorescent tubes have a naturally very long life span of many years, but manufacturers try to cut it short with extremely shitty electronics that are designed to fail within 5000 hours. Even my computer's PSU is better than that, and it has far more interdependent parts. Unscrupulous manufacturers also try to increase overall production throughput by making the devices non-modular, so people throw out CCFLs that are 95% 'good' but happen to have one burnt-out component that's locked under the non-serviceable moulded plastic.

The theory seems to be that recycling legislation will force the costs back onto manufacturers, encouraging them to produce better quality but I'm not convinced. It seems like a bad alternative to leasing. As broken lights (or vacuum cleaners) are shuffled between consumers and producers, a constant trickle of toxic waste falls out of the loop and fills the dumping grounds and/or wildlife areas. Meanwhile, transport, shipping, sales and other middlemen industries make a tidy profit. It's surely worthwhile for larger items, but 1~3 euro trinkets are likely to be disposed of together with inorganic waste, despite the scare of mercury pollution. Out of sight, out of mind.

By fixing one problem, they've created another and have subtly shifted the energy consumption elsewhere, so in my opinion getting rid of incandescent bulbs was not a clean fix.

2400W for a hair dryer is understandable since it's just a heater. But complacency stifles development. The dryers could have a jet-like bypass that recirculates most of the hot air.

But the vacuum cleaners have turned to complete shit. Our family's 1800W one is quite obviously weaker than the old 1200W we had many years ago. The piping is the same diameter, and it's a similar kind of soft flexible plastic that cannot physically maintain lower pressure without deforming and coiling up. If it wasn't for the forced-air cooling, the motor's electrical rating would probably be only about 400W, maximum. The motors are simply inefficient and grossly overloaded, so they have to waste even more power for self-cooling. Even in the 1990s the designs were already so bad, that if the suction was blocked, the machine would either have a warning light or automatically activate some kind of bypass to keep the cold air flowing so the motor wouldn't burn itself out, even though a blocked vacuum cleaner is operating at minimum load!

Even engineers tend to forget about all the sh*t that goes on inside household appliances. Thank goodness we have capitalist Americans who can lead the way and wipe out the competition with better efficiency and better everything!

This is just ridiculous. Time to leave the EU before we reach topping point. Seems like the longer we stay the stupider we will get!

I had a debate with someone on this. My position was that it was needless interference and that market forces could sort it out. But it turns out there are some reasonable arguments from the protectionist side. Recapping:

Free market
As people use more electricity, especially for things like recharging their battery-powered cars (just wait until that one hits ), electricity prices will naturally increase to cover infrastructure upgrades and lock-in. 'Dumb' consumers will be pruned away as they learn to spend their money more wisely. The devices are basically harmless and there exist less extreme methods of discouraging people from using them if it's such a big deal.

Protectionism, Socialism-lite
A large part of the electricity infrastructure is not part of the market. It's controlled by governments and monopoly providers, and continuity of supply is a big social obligation. For something that big, markets are too laggy to be able to maintain a stable system, while still giving people complete freedom to use whatever electrical devices that they want. The 'price' indicator is too slow and crude to be able to provide all of the information that consumers need, such as: whether everyone else's electricity usage has also increased, upcoming maintenance costs, or upcoming problems with fuel supplies.


So I kind-of lost that debate. And it reminded me of an argument I made one time, that old industries usually seem to stagnate. They become concerned with things like consolidating their market position and eliminating competitors rather than innovating. Vacuum cleaners seem to fit into that category. They're all the same old plastic crap, and producers keep putting shittier and shittier motors into them, just so that their model has bigger numbers in the showroom.

I don't find energy efficiency to be bad. If the wattage of a device is lowered by x times this doesn't necessarily mean that the device will have to me used x more times to achieve the same results. In my oppinion, companies manufacturing those products haven't been putting much effort on making them efficient and I can't say that it's bad that there's now something that might change that. And so far I can say that there has been a pretty good job done with efficiency ratings. Here's the label for washing machines for example.

Because the quality of the product will be sacrificed along with the power consumption. Honestly, there's a limit to how efficient these different types of devices can even be while serving the intended purpose of the device. Is it better to vacuum your rug once with a machine equipped with a 1600 watt motor, or twice with a 900 watt motor? Really, the amount of energy we use on this entire planet is insignificant compared to the amount of energy available (wasted) but most of our methods of power generation are notoriously inefficient and wasteful (be it in the actual refining process of the fuels, the manufacturing of the components required for clean power, or the actual waste products of power generation.)

The sum total of the work to be performed by the end user is a constant, the efficiency of the worker is a variable that should be considered along with the efficiency of the power generation method, and the efficiency of the power consumption to produce/refine/create the materials used in the product, and in assembling the product after the individual components have been created. Reducing the wattage isn't going to increase the efficiency without completely redesigning the motor with different and more expensive components. The net power consumption can increase by shifting more energy from the end user towards the manufacturing of the product, and also an underpowered motor will produce more heat decreasing the efficiency further as it is used...

How about replacing single phase transformers with 3 phase transformers in residential areas; increasing the power output of existing electrical devices while simultaneously decreasing the amperage, and reducing the total cost of power for everybody...

Just because someone in Brussels  brought this up as an idea doesn't mean that everyone here in Europe is nuts. If you think about it, it's not that of a bad idea. The biggest electronic device you have at your home is most likely your oven. It uses around 5000 watts, isn't it weird that a hand held device like a hair dryer consumes half of that? That's inefficiency at it's best. The previous campaign to push incandescent light bulbs out of the market and replace them with energy saving ones was succesfull and no one was affected by it in a negative way. I can't see why you find this proposal to be unreasonable.

This is such a crappy situation, we have to be the ones paying high for energy and giving the example to "go green", while places like USA and China pollute as much as they want so they can have cheap energy...

First it's vacuum cleaners, now 'lunatics' in EU plan barmy bans on HAIRDRYERS and KETTLES
This is crazytown

Where's my nanny?

More...http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/505160/EU-vacuum-cleaner-plan-barmy-bans-on-HAIRDRYERS-and-KETTLES