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Japan to Discourage Sale of Old Electronics
devphaeton writes to tell us Engadget is reporting that after April 1st (no this is not an April fools joke) the sale of old electronics in Japan could become much harder. From the article: "It seems that Japan's government revised its "Electrical Appliance and Material Safety Law" back in April 2001, and added a stipulation that items authorized under the country's old law (the "Electrical Appliance and Material Control Law") couldn't be sold anymore, but granted those products a five-year grace period. Well, if you check your convenient wall calendar, you'll see that the five-year period is about to end, which means that as of April 1, pretty much any electronic gear sold before April 1, 2001 can't be legally resold in Japan." The article also mentions that sellers can continue to sell old gear providing they get certification that the items conform to modern safety standards.
Ah, it would seem that in truth, it's only for electrical safety guidelines, kind of like when the UL requires a recall for faulty/dangerous components...
This is only retail sales, not individuals. And it isn't a ban, it merely requires the retailer to take responsibility that the device is safe according to the new standard. And it involves only the safety of high-voltage (mains-powered) equipment, not electronics.
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Here's a link discussing it: http://www.mutantfrog.com/2006/02/22/2nd-hand-ele
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> for an economy struggling against a weak Yen.
The Japanese economy is struggling against their own demographics; there are fewer and fewer young people to support more and more older folks. Hard to say how that's going to sort itself out... but seems like a vacuum is opening there that will be filled by someone.
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Like Japan, this may effect the resale of used goods, although there will be a patchwork of mildly inconsistent laws throughout the EU. As I see it, these initiatives will have enormous impact on the used technology market AND on small manufacturers, as another level of paperwork and expense is added to the process. The result could be fewer garage startups like Apple and H-P.
I wouldn't mind if some of the "made for the Japanese market only" notebooks and appliances became available used in the US.
Heh, we've been getting old US articles in Mexico for decades. Welcome to the club.
As has been pointed out, this only applies to old electronics that connect to MAINS circuits (e.g. wall outlets, which are 100 VAC RMS in Japan IIRC).
Category II circuit, such as MAINS, as defined by IEC and (in the US) Underwriter's Laboratories, must be designed to tolerate overvoltage conditions such as those caused by transformer shorts or relatively distant lightning strikes. From UL 3121-1, a circuit designed with a working voltage of 100 V DC or AC RMS must tolerate a peak impulse voltage of 1360 V for a few microseconds (from table D.10). This doesn't necessarily mean that the product still has to work after such an impulse; it just means that the product must remain safe to the operator for such an impulse. Fuses can blow, chips can be damaged, but no voltage greater than 60 V DC / 42.4 V AC pk can be exposed to the user.
I assume that Japan's old standard, before 2001, was weaker than this. Thus, older electronics can't be sold because they could theoretically kill the users.
This only applies to products that carried MAINS voltages. (Products with wall-warts limit the high voltage to the wall, and are completely unaffected.) Even then, the old products might have been designed above the standard, and therefore could still be sold anyway.
(Disclaimer: I design high voltage hardware products.)
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
Of human lead disposal, the vast majority, over 90%, is car battries. Solder is only a fraction of the remaining fraction. Eliminating lead solder, while keeping lead car battries, is like saving power by turning off a table lamp, while leaving your windows open and AC on.
But it gets worse. The non-lead solders are predominantly tin. This has two major disadvantages over lead based solders:
1) Higher melting point. Means more components get fried and more joints don't form properly in creation, leading to more stuff for the junk heap.
2) Tin whiskers. For some reason, tin solders have little tiny tin cyrstals grow on them. Should that growth touch another lead, you get a short and thus a blown component. They happen even if you put a coating on the board. Given how close joints are these days on ICs, this is a bigger problem than it was in the past. NASA has info on it http://nepp.nasa.gov/whisker/
Really, this is not only a solution to a non-issue, it just makes things worse over all.
I work for a small manufacturer of high-end vacuum tube audio equipment in the USA. While we have almost zero sales in Japan, we often get inquiries about vintage equipment and tubes. Last month, a Japanese gentleman stopped by the shop, with an American friend & interpreter. The laundry list was exactly as you describe - Western Electric, Voice of the Theater, Ampex, JBL, Altec, Electro-Voice and so forth.
As one would expect, he was exceptionally polite and willing to look at anything we cared to show him, but it was also very clear exactly what he was seeking. It's pretty odd how the Japanese aren't interested in *new* handbuilt USA tube equipment, but are willing to shell out a king's ransom for old gear, with questionable sonic qualities. While I'm not ultra-keen on seeing this legacy equipment go overseas, it's safe to say that it will be very well cared for by the new owners. They revere it almost to the point of fetishism.
I wanted to take him by the Pavek Radio Museum, but that would have been way too cruel ;-)
There's a Starman, waiting in the sky / He'd like to come and meet us, but he hasn't got the time.
The silicon parts rarely go bad.
There must be a serious plague of exploding N64s and MP3 players in Japan.
Well, in all seriousness though, this is a problem.
Lots of early consumer electronics devices won't even remotely approach modern safety standards. Consider early radios and TV sets which often used a "hot chassis" (where the steel chassis was directly connected to one side of the power line as part of a system avoiding the use of an expensive power transformer), like those using the traditional "All American Five" tube lineup (50B5 or 50C5, 35W4, 12AV6, 12BE6, 12BA6), or the flip-leaf toasters of the 1920s. These items constitute only a very small risk because they will mostly be in very casual use by informed collectors and restorers, and short of mounting them in fireproof plexiglass boxes with isolation transformers, they will never even approach modern safety standards. (Note that a hot chassis wasn't as big a risk before they became surrounded by modern grounded electrical equipment - in their designed surroundings, you were unlikely to touch a grounded object at the same time as the radio. Also note that *many* post-war Japanese radios used the All-American Five design!)
Such a rule would effectively eliminate the collectable marketplace and probably result in the loss of many of the early products of companies which later became leaders in their fields. The first Sony transistor radio is historically significant, as is the first JVC VHS VCR, as is...
Japan is also noted among automotive enthusiasts for similarly draconian rules surrounding old cars - I cannot corroborate this, but I have heard that the *entire* braking system must be replaced in all cars over a certain number of years of age.
The grisly irony, of course, is that this is from a culture which reveres aged people... but they're apparently happy to destroy the remaining artifacts those people built.
(By the way, good rule of thumb: *never* leave any piece of electronic equipment made before about 1980 running unattended, inspect them for possible dangers like rotten insulation, and *always* assume that any exposed metal pieces are connected to one side of the power line.)
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
I read that on a certain day every year in Japan, it is customary (at least in the wealthier areas) to put all of your used (from the last year or so) electronics out on the curb (or in the alley, whichever you have) as an emblem of your prosperity, and as a demonstration of your intent to replace your old Japanese goods with new.
Sigh. A kernel of truth blown up into unrecognizeability.
One week in April there are several one-day holidays that happen to fall in that one week, and the sole remaining workday is often made a holiday as well (or people just take one vacation day). It's called "golden week", and is a major holiday. Other longer holidays, like the new year, and Obon, are traditional and family oriented, but during golden week you're free to do whatever you please.
So it's not so surprising that this is perhaps the foremost travel holiday, but with so many people with free time, many stores also schedule major sales campaigns for that week. So lots of people buy new stuff during that week, and throw away the old. Garbage collecting is done at the curb here, and with all the old stuff being thrown out, and as the garbage collectors are on holiday too, it really piles up.
So yes, there tends to be lots of older electronics sitting by the curb at around the end of Golden Week - along with furniture, refrigerators, household stuff and plain old garbage. But most of it really is old and broken (people do buy new stuff for a reason), and no, nobody cares what people throw out. After all, apartment buildings and single homes both have a common pickup spot nearby so it's not like you can easily figure out whose stuff it is anyhow.
And while you can make the occasional find if you persevere, it's really no different from any dumpster-diving - often fruitless, and in many cases probably not entirely legal (the stuff does belong to either the thrower away or the garbage company, after all).
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