Price is a good stand-in for it, and it helps encourage "landfill rescue" - buying a shirt at goodwill that would otherwise go into the grinder is better than almost any other option for acquiring a shirt, even if it's a relatively crappy shirt.
Part of the issue with it is that what is "most energy efficient/best for the planet" for a single user may not scale up to what is best for everyone to do.
There's also a problem in that future years of function cannot be estimated well or reliably; the average American kitchen will last 40-60 years, but be remodeled in 10-15 years. Since you cannot control what happens after your house is sold, you are better off using another calculation (or assuming that the purchaser of your house will bulldoze it or something).
Isn’t that already approximated by the purchase price of a used item? There’s some weird transients where a 45-day old car is artificially cheaper (because why would someone sell a 45-day-old car if it wasn’t a lemon?), but that seems to average out pretty quickly.
It might slightly underprice used electronics, but if the alternative destination is a landfill, that slight underpricing seems fine to me.
Part of the issue with it is that what is "most energy efficient/best for the planet" for a single user may not scale up to what is best for everyone to do.
There's also a problem in that future years of function cannot be estimated well or reliably; the average American kitchen will last 40-60 years, but be remodeled in 10-15 years. Since you cannot control what happens after your house is sold, you are better off using another calculation (or assuming that the purchaser of your house will bulldoze it or something).