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And that is exactly why we need more regulation on this area, because it’s NOT sustainable right now.
This was why the EU made it mandatory to use USB-C, so we only need few chargers for everything in our home. This alone were tons of e-waste reduced each year.
We need this thinking in other areas too.
We need phones that don’t break so easily and we should be able to repair them and replace the battery, at the very least.
we have phones that don’t break easily and we can repair them and replace the battery; with long-term support.
what we need are laws that makes it mandatory for all.
Make laws that give consumers mandatory, irrevocable warranties that include fit-for-purpose clauses, and has phrasing such as “reasonable expected lifetime” for the goods. Make those laws apply to whoever sells you the goods, not the manufacturer.
Laws like that weed out a lot of crap. Shops won’t buy crap in because they have to deal with the warranty on said crap. Manufacturers won’t make (as much) crap because they have to deal with returns.
You won’t be able to buy a $4 air fryer any more, but the one you do buy will last a lot longer.
Edit: I’m Australian, and we have consumer rights over and above warranties offered by manufacturers. Those rights would be a good start.
They start about half way down this page:
https://www.accc.gov.au/consumers/buying-products-and-services/consumer-rights-and-guarantees
an online store could operate from places where such laws don’t apply. most people nowadays mainly do their shopping online anyway and physical stores have largely disappeared unless it doubles as a warehouse. i guess australia and NZ has the advantage of stringent import laws though.
but i suppose this goes for my earlier argument as well.
According to the page linked in the post above, overseas businesses selling in Australia are subject to the same rules. It does say the rules might be hard to enforce on overseas businesses though.
They’re a dying breed, however.
fairphone is doing pretty well. their new one is quite competitive spec-wise too.
I remember a while ago Motorola (before Google acquisition) came out with a phone that had a nearly indestructible screen. in the video they were throwing it off a roof, hitting it with a hammer, crushing it with a car, and all it had was a couple of dings. Haven’t heard a peep since then. What happened to that technology?
What happened to that technology?
They probably realized that profits would decrease.
E-waste will continue to be a problem until companies are forced to make products that are designed to be repaired and upgraded without replacing them.
We have certification for safety and compliance, why not one that guarantees that an electronic product can be fully repaired by the end user using readily available (and affordable!) parts? It can be on a scale from 1 to 10, and the less repairable the item, the more restricted its distribution should be.
Every laptop should be made like a Framework laptop; every phone like a Fairphone. Every electronic product should certified to have long life.
Hardware is not even the biggest issue imho. Software/firmware is even much worse. How is it possible to sell a phone that does not even get updates for 5 years. And why is Fairphone, Google Pixel and iPhone standing out with only 5 ish years.
Luckily the EU is currently working on that.
IMO its fine for vendors to abandon their products but they should be required to release all technical documentation and software used with the device into the public domain so enthusiasts can continue where companies stopped.
Exactly. Right to Repair should include software and whatnot, not just parts and schematics.
Fair point re: software. Part of manufacturing products that don’t need to be thrown away would entail longer software support, naturally.
But realistically, software was never an issue 15+ years ago, when your toaster and microwave weren’t connected to the internet and your fridge didn’t have a large tablet interface.
I think we would all do better by having a few more “dumb, but immortal” products in our lives.
Exactly.
Why can’t I buy a decent dumb TV? I get that people want smart TVs, but surely there’s a decent market for people who really don’t need those features and would be happier with a simpler product. I’m absolutely part of that market, and I’m sure there are others.
I generally prefer simpler devices, and it was difficult buying a fridge with decent longevity (i.e. limited smart crap, ice maker in the freezer instead of fridge, etc). That’s becoming more and more difficult, and large appliances have shorter and shorter lifespans (I had my compressor die twice in <10 years in my LG fridge… fridges used to last 15+ years).
I generally prefer simpler devices, and it was difficult buying a fridge with decent longevity (i.e. limited smart crap, ice maker in the freezer instead of fridge, etc). That’s becoming more and more difficult, and large appliances have shorter and shorter lifespans (I had my compressor die twice in <10 years in my LG fridge… fridges used to last 15+ years).
I should say that my current fridge is 27 years old and has NEVER had a problem (other than over-stuffed crisper drawers being broken).
I was reading that the average life for a fridge is 10-15 years, and I can’t honestly believe they are being made so poorly these days. They are such simple appliances, and I dread the day when I have to replace this one for a modern version.
But I’d love for my next TV to be a dumb TV. All the features my LG tv has just gets in the way of using it. LOL
Yeah, after some research, LG in general is the worst, especially with their linear compressor. It failed after 2-3 years (under warranty), and failed again after 4-5 more years. We didn’t bother fixing it again, since the repair people said it’d cost $600+ assuming the part is under warranty, and probably wouldn’t last much longer anyway. Samsung is apparently similarly bad, but with different components. I liked this video, which goes over which fridge to get, and other resources say something similar: LG and Samsung are piles of crap (they’re super fancy though), Whirlpool and GE are better if you avoid fancy features, and everything kind of sucks.
We went with Whirlpool this time, but everything I’ve read says the expected lifetime is still just 10-years. I don’t want fancy features, I just want it to keep things cold, and I’d rather pay someone to fix it than replace it…
All the features my LG tv has just gets in the way of using it
Same. I have a Samsung “dumb” TV (~40", 1080p) from ~10 years ago and it’s fine, and I have an LG “smart” TV (~55", 4k) from 5-ish years ago, which can be a pain to use and I’d prefer to just have a “dumb” TV instead. I even use the “smart” features sometimes, but they’re slow and I’d get a much better experience with a small PC hooked up to it instead.
But it’s incredibly hard to find non-smart TVs. There’s a handful of “hospitality” TVs, but they’re usually lower resolution, don’t have nice features like OLED, and size seems to cap out around 40" at the biggest (most are 32"). I don’t want any of the AI fixing crap, apps, etc, just give me a bunch of HDMI ports (ideally DisplayPort as well) and a decent picture.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
I liked this video, which goes over which fridge to get
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
The new Pixel is 7 years, which really should be the norm.
I’d really rather use a Linux phone, but a mix of closed modems and other non-technical issues are causing headaches. But theoretically, support on those devices could be indefinite because I could patch it myself if needed.
E waste is full of precious metals. You’d think someone would figure out how to recover them.
There are trace amounts of precious metals mixed in with a lot of other crap. It’s possible to recover them, but nobody is going to do that if recovery costs more than the metals are worth.
'Tis the nature of Economics. -If recycling for money were easy and profitable then it’s highly likely that someone would already be doing it really well and competition would be jumping in to reap some of the rewards. -That said, you will always need a ‘Pioneer’ to pave the way.
Less and less, the last good stuff was made well before the millennium. It costs to put it in there, so manufacturing processes have become more plastic, less metal. Same goes for cars and white goods.
People are doing this, but it requires some gnarly acids and a lot of material. Think extracting gold from sticks of RAM with aqua regia. Not sure of the exact process but scrappers do this in some capacity. I’d imagine the waste from these processes is particularly nasty.
Apple: No no no, it’s fine! Keep buying a brand new phone every 2 years! Oh, you don’t want to? Well, we’ll make them irreparable, lock down the software so that you can’t revive it or reuse it in any way, claim it’s for “security”, and make sure that repairing it costs as much as a new phone.
But believe us, we’re the good guys and are doing our best to be sustainable 😉Graphics card manufacturers: listen up, that graphics card you bought just a few months ago is already outdated. Never mind that it could be full speed, but we artificially gimped it in hardware and software to sell more units. Responsibility to handle the trash you say? Lol, that’d cost money! Let your government ship them to a third-world country and dump it in a slum.
Btw, we’re sustainable, and don’t you forget it!appliance manufacturers: Repairability is for chumps. We need those fat stacks! The day your warranty ends, your device breaks 😘 Planned obsolesce baby! Buy a new appliance you bloody consumer.
IoT manufacturers: Who, us? No, we don’t exist. Look over there. Nothing to see here.
And so on and so forth.
- #opensourceAfterDeprecation : you deprecate or stop supporting a device? nice, now release all the source code, designs, and schemata to the public
- #greenTax : a tax is levied for the estimated impact to the environment your device has
- #recycleByDesign : all your devices need to have a planned recycling route and if somebody else has to figure it out, you pay a nice tax
The most fucked up part is that, if I could, I’d happily take in some of that trash to repair and recirculate it, but corporations make that as difficult as possible so as to not hurt their profits.
And I’d happily keep my current phone if it had security updates, but those ended a few months ago so I’ll be throwing out a perfectly good device.
I’m getting a Pixel for my next phone so I can get 7 years of updates, so I’m trying, but it just sucks that perfectly good hardware gets thrown out just because the manufacturer either blocks repairs or stops supporting it…
Wireless earbuds are trash and part of the problem, like wireless mouses. Stop putting irremovable batteries in things that don’t need batteries, its basically just planned obselecence on shinier more expensive goods. The last thing I want is to spend money on is good quality audio equipment that has a necessary end of life date due to charge cycles. These days you can scarcely find good headphones that arent wireless.
Ok no but a wireless mouse is so much better, rechargeable batteries are the way
Even rechargable batteries have a limit, if you cant swap the battery as a user it’s part of the ewaste problem. It’s also a lot more power consumption for somthing that stays in a stationary space reletive to the computer or laptop.
You convince anyone to take away my wireless earbuds and I’ll hunt you down.
Anyone got a non paywalled version of this?
thanks. someone need to make a bot that auto-post archive links for paywalled sites though
I the mean time, mods should just make a rule that says archive links need to be added to the post body if there is a paywall.
And that said, I don’t get the Wired paywall at all and I’m not subscribed. I wonder if it’s an AB test.
And that said, I don’t get the Wired paywall at all and I’m not subscribed. I wonder if it’s an AB test.
I dont get it either besides that obnoxious banner that you can minimize… might be because of ublock origin addon
Don’t look into that recycling either. It’s just arbitrage all the way to the acid vat man.
Can we just roll it all up in a big ball and shoot it into space on a rocket? That worked great in Futurama… 😉
Super expensive. Better to just burn it in low income communities. /s
Ironically the same stuck up bitches who are always virtue-posting about how green they are, (make damn sure the waiter knows they don’t want a straw in their drink, etc.) are the same people who insist on yearly Apple flagship refreshes so they get social affirmation.
109 devices per capita? I just walked through the house looking at what my partner and I have that plugs in. We don’t have 109 together. And it isn’t like I we don’t have stuff. Mesh wifi routers, camping gear. Heck we even have a refrigerator. What do people collect?
Some people change phones every year, or more often than that, then there’s all the coffee makers, small electronics nobody thinks about (watches, radios), computers and laptops, tvs, speakers, smart lights, kitchen tools, cars, anything digital (like calipers), power tools… Depending on what you count, it could add up to ridiculous numbers for some, skewing the average
They should just burn all the waste. It works for spacex and starlink.
Sure, and pump millions of tons of emissions into the atmosphere while we’re at it. Surrrrrrrrrrrrrrre. 🙄
I think the increase of so called “ewaste” after windows 10 eol next year will be huge.
