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Earth Technology

Electronics Are 'the Fastest-Growing Waste Stream in the World' (vice.com) 115

Posted by msmash from the closer-look dept.
Electronic waste is a growing threat to the environment. Thanks to the low cost of manufacturing, it's easier than ever for corporations to pump out millions of laptops, smart phones, internet of things devices, and other electronics. From a report: A new initiative combining the efforts of the United Nations and the World Economic Forum and the World Business Council for Sustainable Development wants to change that. The group formed the Platform for Accelerating the Circular Economy (PACE), and announced itself at Davos -- a yearly gathering of the world's wealthy elite -- where it released its first report. "E-waste is now the fastest-growing waste stream in the world," PACE's report said. "It is estimated this waste stream reached 48.5 million tonnes in 2018." Most of that waste comes from Europe and the United States and ends up in places like Nigeria and Hong Kong, which suffer the human and economic costs of disposing of the material. "The material value [of e-waste] alone is worth $62.5 billion, three times more than the annual output of the world's silver mines and more than the GDP of most countries," PACE's report [PDF] said.
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Electronics Are 'the Fastest-Growing Waste Stream in the World' More

Electronics Are 'the Fastest-Growing Waste Stream in the World'

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  • REGULATE the CRAPWARE (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Make standards, enforce them, include a recycling fee deposit in the price, etc. THERE ARE SOLUTIONS, expecting it to solve itself is lazy Libertarian fantasy faggot shit.

  • You would think that some smart person would come up with a way to recycle this junk and reclaim the valuable minerals.
    I guess it's cheaper to exploit miners in third world countries to mine new minerals rather than exploit recyclers in third world countries to reclaim the minerals.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Actually most "recycled" electronics ends up on the shores of developing countries where it is burned in fires, polluting the area and people, for pennies-on-dollar rare metal extraction so they can feed themselves barely.

      The whole offshoring/externalizing of wasteful product cycles is why humanity is doomed to its own stupid, cheap plastic machinations. Economic reality dictates we kill ourselves for pennies, so we do that.

      • Re: Recycle? (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        George Takei posted a piece on recycled keyboards on his FB page:

        https://www.facebook.com/georgetakeipresents/videos/2138423206471768/

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      the epoxies and resins, the solvents needed the dissolve them are very toxic

    • The problem is the lack of easy recycling options for electronics and batteries. So people will toss them in the trash and figure no one will notice.
      My community has a Single Stream Recycling, granted it isn't as good as separating your products by plastic, glass and paper. And about 2/3 of what I put in the recycle bin, gets put into a landfill anyways. But I am recycling 3 times as much product, so the overall benefit of what is being recycled is much higher.

      To improve the environment we need to make thi

    • Apple accepts any old Apple product, and extracts as much as they can from it. In the last large keynote they did the stated goal was no more mining of materials because they could get what they needed from recycling old devices.

  • How much is to planned obsolescence (Score:4, Insightful)

    by xack ( 5304745 ) on Wednesday January 30, 2019 @01:09PM (#58046034)
    Windows XP being end of life’d despite being offered on netbooks new less than five years before the deadline. Now with Windows 7 being chopped we will have even more junk. Pefectly good 32 bit hardware is being scrapped due to progammers too lazy to optimize ram usage. The situation is worse with MacOS and android with the lack of updates being offered to most devices. Meanhile my “dumb” phone still is functional 10 years later.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      My first though when I saw the headline was about the planned obsolescence of "smart" phones! Even if they are not glued shut so that batteries cannot be easily replaced, most companies only offer security and OS updates for a year. Warrantees are also only for a year (some countries require two years or longer). The same thing is true to some extent with other personal electronics devices...non-replaceable batteries, and other ways to try to get people to buy the "new shiny" every year, whether they nee

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by antdude ( 79039 )

      This is why I stop upgrading softwares.I still use my decade old desktop PCs and softwares. They mostly work fine. I care not. I used to upgrade often for gaming, but I game rarely these days.

      • People who know I'm into computers and such are often shocked to find out how old my hardware is (my newest computer is now over 7 years old), mostly because whatever they have is fairly new. At this point, I only retire stuff because I get some perfectly good or easily repairable castoff that's a significant upgrade over one of the machines I'm using.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Trogre ( 513942 )

      Pretty much this.

      As for me and my family, I upcycle those old laptops with Linux/XFCE, throw in a cheap SSD (either SATA or with an mSATA-PATA adapter), and they are now faster and more useful than when new.

  • Non-removable batteries (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 30, 2019 @01:10PM (#58046050)

    So many products are essentially disposable because of the built-in non-user removable batteries. How about we outlaw that?

    If I could have bought a genuine battery for my LG Nexus 5 instead of buying another phone, I would have. The only thing wrong with my defunct 2010 MacBook Pro is the battery. Headphones, another great example. How do you replace the batteries in Apple's AirPods? I still own lots of my old game consoles, and play them occasionally, going back to the Sega Mega Drive (Genisis for you US folk). I was gifted a Nintendo Switch, but I doubt that will work in 20+ years like the Mega Drive.

    If we can stop this cancer, and even standardise the batteries, it will solve a lot of e-waste.

    • 2010 Macbook Pro? The battery is child's play to replace (~5 min) compared to Crapple's more recent products...

      https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/M... [ifixit.com]

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Big Boss ( 7354 )

      I agree. On the MBP though, take it to Apple and let them replace it, or DIY. I still run a 2010 MBP. I had the battery going and the mainboard had the graphics chip recall. They replaced the battery for free with the mainboard.

      But yes, sealed in batteries are a really bad idea that needs to go.

    • The only thing wrong with my defunct 2010 MacBook Pro is the battery.
      Relatively easy to replace. You probably can do it yourself even.

    • So many products are essentially disposable because of the built-in non-user removable batteries. How about we outlaw that?
      Shoot, its hard to find a affordable lap top any more that has a replacement battery. Forget about phones.
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • Or if that 95 year old Nobel prize winner can jack up solar, we can buy one rechargable battery and be good for life!
  • Richer nations using poorer nations as waste dumps is the tragedy of the commons equivalent of that guy throwing his burger wrapper out the car window on the highway because he doesn't want it in his vehicle.

    Tossing your trash out of your immediate line of sight still dirties up the same rock we all live on.

  • 100% tax (Score:5, Insightful)

    by b0s0z0ku ( 752509 ) on Wednesday January 30, 2019 @01:38PM (#58046242)
    100% tax on devices with glued-in batteries that can't be changed by the user in under 10 minutes. Same with soldered-in non-upgradeable storage. Donesky!

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      I have a box full of electronics which are in perfect working order but will never be used again. Routers with a WAN2LAN throughput of less than 30Mbps and a maximum of 802.11g, 100Mbps switches, media player boxes which can't use current codecs, and so on. None of those things have built-in batteries or could be made useful again with more storage. I also have defective LED lamps, old phones with replaceable batteries that I'm not going to replace because the phone is obsolete, and old computers that could

  • Itsn't it obvious? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Isn't that an obvious conclusion when product companies actively block products from being repaired? And going as far as classifying something as trivial as a battery replacement AS a repair?

    Granted with some devices that are small (Like Bluetooth hands-free sets) making them large enough for a battery replacement is difficult, but with no headphone jack, we're still back to the producing company to point the primary finger at for why this is happening.

  • I know its far fetched but what if companies (by rules I guess ? give ideas) maybe if they could use some kind of regular standard on design that way companies could reuse the same equipment or hardware. Less garbage in the end. Its not a perfect solution and I'm sure its going to be a NO from Apple for example since one of their biggest marketing strategy is to be different visually when making phones and laptops...#fuck apple anyways.

  • ... is two years old! How will I fit in with such an old "device"?

  • Everything that is sold needs to be evaluated for to cost of recycling it and then add that cost to the item as a tax. That way, when a recycler spends $X to recycle thrown out object Y then they get that recycling investment money.

    This isn't a complex problem, we just have weak/corrupt politicians stopping us from doing what has to be done.

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • EA (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward

    I initially misread the title as Electronic Arts the fastest growing waste...

    Got a little laugh out of that.

  • Want a real solution? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    A real solution: Standards and Modularity. Modularize and standardize batteries, power supplies, cables, chargers, interfaces, screens, cases, individual components/sub-components and assemblies so they can be reused and used in multiple types of devices. Even screws. Now everything is so proprietary that things can't be reused or used in different systems, so everything becomes waste.

  • Make unrepairable electronics illegal (Score:5, Insightful)

    by grumpy-cowboy ( 4342983 ) on Wednesday January 30, 2019 @02:23PM (#58046548)
    - Non-removable batteries : Illegal
    - Glued RAM/SSD/CPU/...   : Illegal
    - Anything unrepairable   : Illegal !!
  • With Electric batteries having a limited life span (like all of my old smart phones), we should include electric cars, which are basically smart phones on wheels. lol.

  • Why is this a thing? (Score:1, Interesting)

    by sirsky ( 53613 )
    Why is this even a thing? So what? China, Hong Kong, etc. gathers the materials, manufactures it, and sells it in the US. We in the US buy it, use it, and when we're done with it, we send it back. If it's such a problem, they should figure out how to deal with it, since it's all going back from whence it came anyway.

  • There should be significant tax penalties for:

    - Non replaceable batteries OR OEM refuses to make available replacement batteries
    - Devices that can't be reasonably easily opened (e.g. require hot air gun to pry away glued-down screen to get into case)
    - Vendor applies warranty void stickers or attempts to void warranty for effecting a repair via replacement of a battery or modular part

    And smaller penalties for:
    - Devices that are not modular (e.g. things like cameras, speakers, etc. soldered to mainboard)
    - Ven

  • ..in absolute numbers how environmental footprint of all of electronics industry compares to the footprint of a single full size container cargo or tanker ship.

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • I'm trying to do my part...
    https://www.practicalmachinist... [practicalmachinist.com]

    My 2 step solution: If you're no longer providing reasonably priced support, you must release all tech info so others can. And, if you manufacture it, anyone can dump your product back on your doorstep for you to deal with...

  • One problem I see is that in my town we have an electronic "recycling" bin at the landfill which really just goes to a scrapper. People put their old electronics in there thinking that they're doing such good for the world.

    Unfortunately there's quite a few good items put in there like flat panel TV's that just need a minor repair. I've seen i5 class computers, perfectly good JBL speakers, and lots of laptop power supplied, among a lot of other stuff. Unfortunately, the town makes a few cents per pound, so w

  • This is a tempest in a teapot. Manufacturers know that survivability requires limited lifetime products. There are only 7 billion people on this planet which means it is very easy to limit your profitability if you can not generate repeat sales.

    This would not normally be a problem. It is the nature of the beast. Where the problem comes in is greed. Sure, that iphone could last for 10 years easily... but, we want MORE money than default attrition would give... so the attrition rate is increased to where your

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