Meditation On My Airfryer

 

 

We keep our air fryer in the garage in the winter and on the back deck in the summer because it is noisy and stinky. Overall, it only gets a little use. It was a gift and the type of extraneous kitchen tool I would typically get by without. Despite it getting lightly used, the rotating feature has quit so I have to periodically spin the basket by hand to keep it from burning. Constructed to defy repair, it doesn't allow easy disassembly to fix the problem, so I will eventually be stuck with an expensive piece of waste that I can't fix. It is a metaphor for the way we do things across our culture. 

I am old enough to remember a world where repair shops fixed everything, and repair was often an option for most things. Repair is rarely an option today, creating vast quantities of unrecyclable household goods that, as complex amalgams of plastic, electronics, and metals, are only landfill waste outside of select high-tech recycling programs. Unfortunately, some of it may even be toxic waste containing PFOS type chemicals. The saddest thing is the lack of repair has caused a class of middle-class artisans, from appliance repair to electronics to the last holdouts in small-scale car repair, to be pushed out of the landscape. Another victim in our economic systems war on the middle class.

As for the chemicals, the interior trays, covered in a material I believe to be a PFOS-type non-stick coating, may be okay, at least in the short term. But, forever chemicals aren't called that for nothing. While research has shown that these undamaged coatings are okay, I am still skeptical since the final toll of the current industrial experiment on human health has yet to be in.