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Over the past twenty years New Zealanders have become increasingly unaware of the real life cycle cost of many of their purchasing decisions. To make my point I will use a semi-durable asset that we are all familiar with because most of us own one and probably use it several times a week, the humble toaster.

Consider this, in the 80s if your toaster failed you would take it to your local appliance store that actually employed people to repair it. I know your response is “but I can buy a new one for $45” which is correct but, is this the real cost of your buying decision? In other words, can you only measure the cost of toaster ownership in dollars?

Well in my opinion no, I believe there are two other considerations that are also very relevant components of the life cycle cost pertaining to toaster ownership, these being the social cost or perhaps better defined as the cost to New Zealanders plus the environmental cost and I will explain why.

During the 80s New Zealand was supported by numerous well trained and qualified technical service providers, for our toaster it was the local appliance store who employed New Zealanders who could repair almost any appliance we owned including the humble toaster, today this service industry no longer exists along with the jobs of many New Zealand jobs, the social cost.

Now I know it’s true twenty years ago the toaster probably cost close to 3 or 4 times what you would be expected to pay in today’s money so repairing it was generally a ‘very good idea’, but consider this; that more expensive toaster that once graced our New Zealand kitchens had a service life of around twenty plus years and then when it finally was ‘toast’ itself it more than likely out lived its low priced replacements several times meaning we weren’t choking up our landfills with near new toasters that had unfortunately been prematurely retired to the rubbish heap after suffering on most occasions from a repairable fault, the environmental cost.

Does what I am saying mean toasters were better made twenty years ago, of course not, but every time that old toaster failed it was remanufactured or repaired by competent New Zealanders which meant we kept more New Zealanders in skilled service work, more money remained in New Zealand instead of being transferred to overseas factories and less toasters were being dumped.

Now you are probably asking yourself what has a toaster to do with an air conditioning service provider and the answer is absolutely nothing. However, what I can say is Ideal Air is a business that is concerned about helping people to make informed buying decisions that will not only have financial consideration but will include both social and environmental elements as well. What this means to Ideal Air is that we believe remanufacturing of air conditioning equipment should always be the first option explored when considering upgrading/renewing plant and as a business, we partner with the community of environmentally aware building owners to work through this as an option before recommending the replacement of any mechanical plant.