Reuse Options – Handling End-of-Life Goods

Make Do and Mend

Are you frustrated when products break down because some simple component has failed? Do you feel guilty throwing something away prematurely when you know that for the most part the item still retains a good deal of quality and useful mileage?

During the Second World War “make do and mend” was a slogan used by the Board of Trade to encourage people to extend the useful life of their property at a time when raw materials were scarce. Parallels can be drawn with the drive to reduce raw material and energy use for environmental reasons today.

Many items incorporate components which can be described as wear parts – where a limited lifetime cannot be avoided through design – much like the brake pads or clutch friction plate in your car, seals in a washing machine or even the carbon brushes within the pump motor. Often the product is designed so that these parts can be replaced very easily.

In the past an intimate knowledge of the spares network was a critical part of the tradesman’s armoury and an inability to know where to find spare parts was a barrier to mending them yourself. With the recent trend toward the lower cost of consumer goods in relation to the hourly rate of a tradesman, paying for a repair is often financially unrealistic. With the advent of the internet, however, there has been an explosion in the number of spares suppliers trading online, allowing delivery in days.

Your first port of call may be to the original equipment manufacturer or the retailer because you consider that they are more likely to supply a warranted, quality part and sometimes this is the case.

However, read on to tackle home repair.

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