Everything that doesn’t last at least 50 years is a step backward. It signifies a decline in the physical-biological system potential. If that system—Earth—is already fully burdened, beyond regeneration capacity, or I other words: if we are living above our personal resource bubble (beyond our physical-biological means), it becomes extremely problematic.
Let me explain with an example. Consider a house as an illustration. Everyone lives independently from around age 20 to 70. Before that, a person lives in the parents home, and afterward in a retirement home. This is a bit generalized, but serves as an example. If the lifespan of a house is only 50 years (or less), then every new generation would need to build their own new homes. This is impossible; it would mean that the entire Netherlands would have to be rebuilt from scratch every 50 years, which would result in an enormous destruction of resources and energy. Even if it could be done, we can barely build 70,000 homes per year now, and even that level of environmental impact is already a problem. And over 50 years, that would amount to 3.5 million homes, or barely 40 percent. After 50 years, 60% of people would be without a home.
However, if homes last longer, there would be no need to build new ones, and the energy and materials (if available) could be used for other purposes, in other words: growth. For a simple illustration, consider roof tiles: if they last 60 years, the next generation would only need to replace them after 10 years, and the generation after that, after 20 years, and so on. After five generations, you would have saved one entire cycle of roof tiles, which represents actual growth—20% over 50 years. If they last 100 years, that’s a growth of 2% per year. Of course, this is only under the condition that resources are still available, which we’ll discuss shortly.
This principle applies not just to homes, but to everything: roof tiles, cars, tables, televisions, etc. One television every 50 years, ideally even longer… Getting tired of your sofa? Unfortunately, you’d have to keep it for life! Anything lasting less than 50 years is pure capital destruction—capital in terms of energy and resources. And currently even beyond the system potential. Besides, even in social perspective, only the individual benefits from this, not society.
Regarding recycling: with every conversion step, even in recycling, usable material and energy are lost. Plus if everything lasts a long time, there wouldn’t be much material to recycle because nothing would break down or collapse. [1] Of course, even if something lasts more than 50 years, reuse or recycling can still be interesting. Think of the Romans, who used stones from collapsed or abandoned temples*, but the opportunities would be few.
The point is, we have long exceeded our budget for energy and resources; we’re using them far beyond the replenishment level of stocks, mainly depleting them. [2] For example, the metal ores we find now have increasingly lower concentrations of usable metals, and it costs exponentially more energy to extract the same amount of usable metal over time. And the re-concentration time of metals is far beyond human time horizons. [3]
This isn’t very visible in daily life because resources are globally traded and exploited (“depletion elsewhere”). But we could consider a personal resource bubble: In the Netherlands, there’s about 0.2 hectares of land available per person. [4] For the current diet, but produced organically (without depleting resources for fertilizers, pesticides, and raw materials from elsewhere), more land is needed than is available. And then there wouldn’t even be any land left for building with renewable materials, even after 50 years, or even after 100 years. It just isn’t available within one’s personal bubble if they want to live in balance with their energy and resources. (And for some, the resource bubble is even much smaller, for example, if someone plays golf…[5]).
If we adopt a vegetarian diet, we might have some resources left over. A vegetarian diet requires about 1,000 m² per person, organically. But even then, we’re tight because the other 1,000 m² is already used for existing buildings, sports fields, and so on, and part of it is needed for energy (e.g., biomass). So, you still have to be careful—how long things last determines how much land remains available each year for other purposes.
Certainly, some things are difficult to make last for 50 years. For example, it’s easy to see that a thatched roof won’t last 50 years. That thatch has to come from the land, so it has a certain land use per lifespan. Therefore, you can calculate how much of your personal land bubble you need to reserve to replace it earlier than 50 years. But the longer it lasts, the less strain on your land use. ( In that case, baked tiles might have an advantage**).
The same considerations must be made for everything: How long does it last? Or, how can we make it last as long as possible, and do we have the resources for it? Sometimes it’s simpler than you think. I previously wrote about the example of cars: Cars nowadays can easily last more than 50 years—they don’t rust anymore. The rest is maintenance, as they’ve shown in Cuba for decades. So, you shouldn’t replace them with electric cars, but if it absolutely must be electric (and if the resources are available), you should convert existing cars to electric ones, by replacing the engine, not replace the cars! Simple, right?
For homes as a whole, it’s obviously not an issue for them to last more than 50 years, with (as minimal as possible) maintenance. They can last hundreds of years, which is also why we have such beautiful old city centers and the reason Europe has advanced over the past hundreds of years.[6]
In short, what I’m trying to say is that homes, above all, should last forever, and should be designed for that. Everything else should follow because anything that lasts less than 50 years contributes nothing to society, serves only personal happiness, and contributes to the degradation of the system.
.
*That’s why archaeologists can no longer fully reconstruct those temples.
** Made from eroded material continuously carried by rivers and baked using biomass wood from a small portion of the personal land bubble. It would be worth calculating how much that is. However, the signs are not favorable. In Edo Japan, about 300 years ago, this was prohibited because it consumed too many resources (wood energy) compared to other, simpler roofing materials.
.
[1] recycling https://www.ronaldrovers.com/the-rest-impact-of-recycled-materials/
[2] restore /circular https://www.ronaldrovers.com/circular-part-3-restore-circular-energy/
[3] quality https://www.ronaldrovers.com/wp-admin/post.php?post=544&action=edit
[4] 2 hectares: https://www.ronaldrovers.com/living-from-2-hectares-and-not-even-that/
[5] end of life https://www.ronaldrovers.com/there-is-no-end-of-life-of-a-building/
[6] lifetime: https://www.ronaldrovers.com/how-long-do-buildings-last-75-year-or-500/
