I am very curious as to whether the money you save in energy bills from today’s more ‘energy-efficient’ appliances outdoes the money spent in replacing the things so much more frequently.

Older appliances may cost more to run but it’s possible they pay themselves off by virtue of not having to re-buy them every few years.

Speculation, of course. I wonder if anyone’s done the math on this.

I'm not sure if you meant this, but I wonder too.. from the perspective of:

- energy loss in resource extraction and refinement (steel, aluminum, plastic, etc, etc)

- manufacturing energy use

- shipping energy use

- disposal energy costs of old device (including recycling costs)

- all the pollution in the above, versus pollution from local energy sources

It's entirely possible that an energy efficient fridge that lasts 2 years, could cost more energy than a fridge from the 60s that keeps on running.

So outside of "cash cost" even the energy cost may be higher!

But those energy costs are externalized from the manufacturer to other players, so no company cares.

Precisely. So state mandated longer warranties will level the playing field for all manufacturers, whist improving environmental comcerns.

I did the math for my parents once for their 50+-year-old freezer using a Kill-A-Watt. Buying a similar, cheap, efficient modern freezer for paid for itself after 12 years, with an expected life of 11 years.

Of course, this was almost a decade ago, so the numbers might have changed; and a newer device would have an automatic defroster.

Is anyone really having to re-buy appliances every few years? I bought all my appliances back in 2016 (dishwasher, washing machine, induction plate, owen with microwave, fridge, hot water boiler) and none of it broke yet. They're all from different brands, most were cheapest stuff available.

I've had to buy one fridge in my life and it's because the 20+ year old one that came with the house broke, and honestly it was repairable. Likewise, I had to buy one microwave after one that was like 15 years old broke due too much steam getting into the internal workings all the time.

Most new appliances seem to be replacing perfectly functional but outdated appliances in my experience helping people move them. The exception being washers and dryers, but they tend to get mistreated by the owners so it's reasonable that they have a shorter life.

If you read the article that was probably the smarter thing to do is get the cheapest stuff available because yours likely had a lot less bells and whistles that would be more likely to break.

We own a second fridge, a GE (family of 6 so we need the extra storage). It is now ~65 years old and has never needed service and has not failed to maintain the correct temperature.

Not sure you can buy one like anymore.

That's incredible. Might I suggest monitoring its energy usage and reporting it here.

Homes get upgrades to their insulation. How about old refrigerators too ?

It's always weird that this example includes the idea that all current products have an un-removeable IoT integration of some sort.

Most of my appliances were bought recently, none has anything like this.