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Almost 45 Million Tons of E-waste Discarded Last Year (apnews.com)
A new study claims 44.7 million metric tons (49.3 million tons) of TV sets, refrigerators, cellphones and other electrical good were discarded last year, with only a fifth recycled to recover the valuable raw materials inside. From a report: The U.N.-backed study published Wednesday calculates that the amount of e-waste thrown away in 2016 included a million tons of chargers alone. The U.S. accounted for 6.3 million metric tons, partly due to the fact that the American market for heavy goods is saturated. The original study can be found here (PDF; Google Drive link).
Really? Come on...
Exactly: ...
(1) Buy a used car -- the best car, environmentally -- is one where the energy/materials used in manufacturing have already been spent.
(2) Keep your appliances 10-20 years, even if less efficient. Buy simple appliances (dishwashers/washers/fridges with dial electromechanical controls that can be easily fixed) so they last you a decade or two.
(3) Buy an upgradeable computer or laptop -- Lenovo and some Dells are great in this respect. Not stuff like Smurface or iPad that are sealed with glue and where it's barely worth replacing a battery.
(4) Buy a phone with removable battery and SD-expandable storage. Moto G4 Play and G5 are great. Or just carry a flip phone which will last you 10 years
(5) Buy hardware that doesn't require a cloud service to work correctly. With cloud-mandatory hardware, the manufacturer can pull the rug out after a year or two and you'll have little recourse.
Make it illegal to manufacture things that cannot be easily repaired by parts/modules/etc.
End laptops with soldered RAM, soldered and glued batteries, etc. This is built-in obsolescence and should be illegal. Upgrading hardware means a longer lifespan and utility for the hardware. This is good.
End impossibly thin smartphones. Thicker phones mean stronger phones, meaning less cracked displays, less waste.
End fridges with impossible-to-clean cooling coils, leading to burnt-out compressors. The cost to repair means most people dump the whole thing and buy a new one instead.
Make chargers quasi-universal. There's micro-USB for 5V chargers but there should be standard pins/connectors/chargers for 12V and 24V. Set maybe three power levels per voltage and we'll only need three chargers in a house at the most if you have the highest-power models.
#DeleteFacebook
They're probably responsible for half of this e-waste.
The same as the poundage from accidently discarded BitCoins..
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Without better disposal/recycling options, it's going to continue to be like this. People aren't going to put in the effort to search out methods of recycling electronics, hazardous waste like propane tanks, etc, and people don't have space to store that shit to wait for the once a month/quarter/whatever event for actually doing so. The fact that the trash and recycling service that we already pay for doesn't do this is astounding to me.
they have lead and arsenic and they're sent to china and children take them apart
This is what happens when Microsoft and big government collude to put recycling company CEO's in jail.
Big industry LOVES selling new stuff, they HATE when people re-use old stuff. Can't make quarterly sales goals if everybody is re-using old stuff and not buying new.
It's always a good idea to put some valuable material in a safe place for future use.
He was given dominion over the various and sundry living things on the Earth. He was put in the garden of Eden to dress and keep it. That last would be the closest parallel. We've done a particularly poor job of "keeping it".
That's not necessarily all bad. Those older chargers (big wall warts that get warm when charging) wasted a lot of energy. The new small ones are much more efficient.
Support Right To Repair Legislation.
There's one little flaw in your argument: there is no god.
OK, this is stating the obvious, but there might be less e-waste if (a) the stuff was more durable, and (b) fewer companies ran on a forced obsolescence business plan. Just sayin'.
We are past the days where every device had a different, proprietary charger. A few well-made charging solutions save money in the long run over a big box of junk.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
First and foremost, we need to quit exporting our 'trash'. This is a resource that should be kept local and used.
Seriously, we have robotics that can dissemble many of the electronics. Some of it, i.e. the plastics, can, and should, be used for a thermal electricity. At the same time,the rest should be melted down and separated into various elements and then used right away, or stored. FOr example, the mercury and lead can be stored in old mines, until a new use is found for them (and we will).
The electricity generation and selling of some of the elements (gold, silver, etc) will likely pay for the rest.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
The Earth weighs 5,972,000,000,000,000 million tons
Of course waste is bad. But big numbers are meaningless unless some sort of frame is defined.
will provide the greatest mitigation to this condition. I currently use a Pixel that I purchased directly from Google. The battery will die completely before the phone becomes obsolete from a software perspective. It is only the second smart phone I have owned. Before that I probably went through 7 phones since the 90's.
While discarding electronics into dumps isn't great, it's not entirely terrible because it can still be recycled and it's not actively harming the environment sitting in a dump. What is terrible is all the CO2 being released into the air because while it can be recycled it is actively harming the environment. We will eventually move to 100% recycling but we will also have to remove the CO2 from the atmosphere which is going to require a LOT of energy.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
So, the weight of the waste doesn't matter nearly as much as the volume and obviously any related hazardous materials. With the US producing more waste than any other nation, I thought this perspective was useful...
From howstuffworks:
The Great Pyramid in Egypt is 756 feet by 756 feet at the base and is 481 feet tall, and anyone who has seen it in real life knows that it's a huge thing -- one of the biggest things ever built by man. If you took all the trash that the United States would generate in 100 years and piled it up in the shape of the Great Pyramid, it would be about 32 times bigger. So the base of this trash pyramid would be about 4.5 miles by 4.5 miles, and the pyramid would rise almost 3 miles high
Just another day in Paradise
Clearly there's money to be made on this stuff... so after the dump gets paid to take in the shit that could have been recycled, why don't they separate it and ship it off to the recycling centre for more money?
"Resources exist to be consumed. And consumed they will be, if not by this generation then by some future. By what right does this forgotten future seek to deny us our birthright? None I say! Let us take what is ours, chew and eat our fill." -- CEO Nwabudike Morgan
hardware... paper... cease fire stand down.. sing along... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=myo9wXrNUP4 .. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFTLKWw542g .. billions served
valuable mineral deposits of the future.
Alarmist nonsense. God gave man dominion over the Earth to do as he pleases. [etc etc]
For a moment I thought you were being serious. Seems to have gone over the heads of other responders though.
Prove it.
You see, arguing the existence of god is pointless. Anybody intelligent knows that. It's neither provable nor disprovable. Trying to do either is an exercise only foolish participate in.
Link to a page with the report. Direct link to the PDF.
A couple of tidbits that I, personally, found interesting:
- The definition of E-waste: "all items of electrical and electronic equipment and its parts that have been discarded by its owner as waste without the intent of re-use". This includes everything from appliances to solar cells to smartphones.
- On a per-person basis, E-waste is highest in Europe, the Americas and Oceania. However, Europe had the highest recycling rate (35%).
- Unstated, but North America is likely the biggest generator, because the figures given are for "the Americas", which includes North, Central and South in one big lump. That's a really odd decision, for a way to group countries.
- The report claims that only 20% of E-waste is recycled through "appropriate" channels, but they do not define what an "appropriate channel" is.
Living in Europe, I do not believe the recycling figures. In many European countries - and certainly where I live - it would be very difficult *not* to recycle an appliance. Sure, a small charger may land in a wastebasket, but a washing machine? A refrigerator? We don't have public dumps, and these don't fit in a municipal garbage bag. - the recycling center is the only possible place to dispose of these. More: recycling is free (actually: pre-paid with the original purchase price). The last figures I saw nationally were well over 70%, and I suspect the rates are a lot higher by now.
Now, how the recycling companies work is a different matter. Some of them ship the devices to unlicensed or fraudulent companies in Africa or Asia for disassembly, which is often...um...suboptimal. But that is an entirely different problem, actually an enforcement problem since this behavior is (afaik) illegal.
The US has a much bigger problem - not only with E-waste, but with garbage in general. Hauling your garbage off to dumps and burying it, having zero control over what lands in those dumps, geez. Separate the bulk recyclables, incinerate the trash (free electricity + heat), run the ash through separators to recover more metals and minerals. But no, it gets buried, the dumps will eventually leak, and future generations will have to clean it all up.
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
That is a lot of carbon sequestration right there!
Apple has the most recalcitrant approach to repairs, and their response to customers' inquires on repairability is a thinly veiled "Fuck you kindly". Apple can get away with this because it has a captive audience, plus it offers them something they care about, such as a seamless experience and stuff - I don't know very well as i am not an Apple product user but I am not so stupid that I'd deprecate all of Apple's advantages. However, it is infuriating that the entire computer industry is now following them in the footsteps making non-repairable products, never releasing schematics, and never making spare parts available. This is a shit trend that starts with Apple and Apple is the master in forced obsolescence + unfixability.
It kind of makes me even more angry thinking of the independent repair shops jumping through hoops to source spare parts by cannibalizing broken Apple motherboards. That's just kind of humiliating. F you, Apple.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
If you buy a computer you can upgrade, then you will... throwing out old electronics, so you lost all of the benefit.
Meanwhile the iPad 2 I bought for my wife at launch in 2011 (!) is still used daily and works fine. Some day I may replace it, but then it can become a digital picture frame.
She also uses daily my "non upgradable" MacBook Pro 17" from 2010 while many other windows laptops of that vintage are in a scrap heap so how has it hurt to buy a laptop of higher quality that can last a decade or more?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
FORGET HOUSEHOLD DC-- force the devices to fit into basic groups and then watch houses slowly adopt special outlets as you see with USB A outlets... which only happened because regulations FORCED cell phones to use USB power. Anybody remember how each phone had it custom expensive hard to replace adapter?? Common sense regulation at work NOT the industry.
Repeat that success, by requiring all DC devices conform within certain specs. Merging with DATA was a huge blunder, you specify a shape for a dual prong connector and leave the 2nd prong open ended. So the tech nutcases can keep making new USB standards with goofy plugs that are next to the standard DC plug. A proper spec would allow pass-thru power-only sockets that leave an empty hole for the optional data prong. USB-D, USB-E, F... can be square, triangle, whatever but will always fit into the empty hole for the data prong on the plug.
For higher amps or volts, you maybe have 2-3 different DC power standards. Devices will have to adapt to whatever one they choose to use. Such as, needing 10A at 12V but the 12V plug only does 5A so you have to use a 48V plug and step down from that. No AC adapter-- the standard would be for all AC/DC class adapters so you'd have to pick from a limited set of adapters and build-in your own adaptation. Like Phones already do with their USB and battery power sources; and they also do for their own chips running on different voltages.
We can start within just 1 class of AC/DC and expand over time into more classifications. EACH has it's own unique plug standard. It's crazy that I have a pile of AC/DC adapters with the SAME plug output but different voltages and amps. At minimum the plugs need to differ!
Millions of phone adapters are not wasted today because you can use them for all phones. wireless charging could be an exception but that will need a standard at some point too or we'll be throwing out millions of charging pads soon.
So far industry keeps bribing the law from happening. With trump we can expect a federal ban on states doing this. They are already making moves to limit state rights to exercise their rightful power to regulate business.
How many pedophile republicans does it take? Will stealing TIPS for low wage workers do anything? (they are moving on this too.) Seems that the 30% who are authoritarians will support anybody until Faux News says otherwise.
a steam powered fridge. Some of us have to make do with the old fashion electric ones.
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from the US. Mostly the hazardous stuff. I'm actually a bit worried. Right at a time when we need some extra oversight on how waste is going to be disposed we've got a head of the EPA on record saying he'd end it if he could.
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I migrated my non-mortgaged birdhouse to use XLR power in all the rooms. Someone else advocated mini-din but I protested by pointing at the Atmos made by Jaeger-Coulture as being the only logical successor to harness the power of global warming and air-burst nukes and greenhouse gasses; but for data I think encased infra-red optical cables should be the Wave of the future because that is what mr. Eisner stated from his command post in Tomorrowland.
Don'a you see that manufactured waste is free energy?
A fridge should be designed as an insulated box with the condenser and evaporator coils replacable with an similiarly rated fridge unit. Same with the pump, and power supplies.
Computers have had this for decades with standardized PSUs, first AT then ATX. While there is some valid reason for variation between models, the majority are variations for the sake of variation. If the units were designed for specific formfactors, cooling paths (or optional blocking plates for multi-directional flow options), power ratings, and rated lifetimes, then cheap options could still be offered where price is important, while providing a range of products that don't require constant re-invention of every component, helping to drive down per unit costs for each company thanks to standardization.
Keeping consolidation of the industry from impacting costs is a whole other discussion and one that happens regardless of the above.
Hm, how many millions of iPhone chargers are in landfills because Apple is both too cool to use USB and needlessly changes their plugs?
How many people have a cardboard box of perfectly good Wall Warts that are for unknown devices? We need to start mandating power sources that are common format. These things should be standardized - like what happened with 95% of Cell phones and the Micro USB. That became a pseudo standard for many devices that are still usable! The countless devices have particular Voltage and Current and connector specs and so on.. Standarizing Wall warts goes against business practice, but would clearly put us (humans) on a better path. We dont have to save the earth, we just have to keep it inhabitable!
Time for a new Political party in the US (or two!) One is off the rails Other cant pony up a leader.
My small city has a yearly e-waste recycle day but I don't drive so I can't take a printer/copier to the location. It could be repaired with a new print head and ink tanks but the repair place is 25 miles away. I would like to see a program that would allow me to call and have the item picked up. And repaired.
Explain your problem and ask them to see if someone will take it to a charity shop or what other contacts they may have who will take it off you.
Mom moved us here when we were kids and I've been stuck ever since.
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Apple and Microsoft have business models that require this extreme wastefulness. Even as these big silicon valley companies and their talking heads posture as "green", they are forcing people to throw perfectly functional high tech hardware that COULD be used for 20 years into the dumpster after only a year or two.
When Apple wants to push the newest iPhone, they NEED the public to think of their current iPhone as obsolete junk (even though a year earlier these very same flaks claimed THOSE phones were amazing and wonderful and cutting-edge). After all, why buy a new $1000 phone when the one you bought last year for $800 still works? You need to be convinced it is slow and obsolete and junk. New, incompatible, software will be rolled-out and new goofball and not-particularly necessary features will be introduced that seemingly requires the new hardware.
When Microsoft needs you to but new hardware, the modify the requirements to run Windows. The hardware makers rush to make hardware that meets the new specs and once all the new PC hardware coming out both supports and requires the new Windows, the older flavors of Windows no longer work on new machines. New software comes out supporting the newer Windows, and soon people with perfectly functional multi-GigaHertz machines have to toos them because they want to run the now software that only runs on the new Windows which only runs on the new hardware.
Without the most awful, wasteful, and completely unnecessary obsolecense model on Earth, these companies would not be among the most-profitable on Earth.