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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.
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.
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.
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.
The Earth weighs 5,972,000,000,000,000 million tons
But most of its materials are in the wrong place for us. We are running out of copper; there are billions of tons of it in there but it is so hard to collect it together to make cables and pipes. So it's a shame to toss back the copper we have already made the effort to collect.
I can't help but think it's corrupted our economy somehow. Like corporations have gotten society on this planned obsolescence treadmill and deliberate expiration and dropped support are just gimmicks to keep selling us the same shit over and over again.
I also worry that it's a sign that we've kind of run out of ideas, nothing new is really coming, just some rehash of what's already been done.