By silicon.com, 29 January 2004 18:05
How much does a new top of the range PC cost? These days you can easily get something with all the gadgets, gizmos and peripherals thrown in for under £700.
But is that really all it costs? It can easily be argued that the cost of a new PC reaches far beyond the dent in your bank balance. For starters there's the environmental cost, the humanitarian costs - and so on. But if it doesn't hit your bank balance are you really concerned enough to think about such things? Do we really care whether PC manufacturers are responsible for pollution? That plastics and components used to manufacture computers aren't biodegradable?
A brief history of our consumer society would offer up a fairly resounding no on both counts.
But what if the computers are put together in sweatshops in the developing world, by under age staff earning less than minimum wage?
People still wear certain makes of trainers despite wide-spread awareness of the conditions they are made in, so again the vast majority of Westerners probably don't care, which is why the likes of Dell, Hewlett Packard and IBM have got away with it for so long.
Upon hearing that foreign workers are treated abysmally in the production of their kit, all three manufacturers thanked the organisation who brought this to their attention. We can only assume their blissful ignorance to date is genuine but did it never dawn on them to investigate?
Consumers may not have a responsibility to check up on how their goods come to be but with companies increasingly publicising the good they are doing, can they really be found to have these kinds of skeletons in their closet?
Companies are very quick to publicise the good they are doing in certain regions. It's incredible how absent the PRs and photographers are when things go wrong.
Major IT hardware companies like to be seen to be pioneering, philanthropic and conscientious but in reality they are mired in many of the same problematic issues as heavy industry.
Surely this is where the responsibility must lie. Consumers are unlikely to do the research and make decisions based on what they find out - and nor should they. Responsibility should be placed on companies to better monitor all aspects of their activities domestically and overseas as ignorance is no longer an excuse.
IT needs to clean up its act.
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1. Mary Freeman
A lot of people are starting to wonder about what they are buying, particularly as (a) their level of personal debt is increasing to limits that may not withstand an interest rate rise and (b) they find that they are still not any happier.
Amongst others, I have made a conscious decision to (a) start living within my means and (b) buy the best I can afford - including looking at the ecological and social impacts. ethicalconsumer.org is a good start point. However, in their June/July 2000 magazine they were unable to recommend an environmental best buy as all the major PC suppliers had lobbied the government against environmental legislation. Dell and Sun got mentions for connections with Oppressive Regimes. Though Dell reached the top 5 in environmental awareness. IBM had the longest listing including lawsuits for exposure to carcinogens, unlawfully exporting computers to Russian nuclear labs and being accused of paying bribes in Brazil.
I'm not perfect, and still succumb to the occassional impulse buy, but if you really want stuff off your conscience and to sleep better at night, IMHO, a little bit of forethought goes a long way!