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World's Pile of Electronic Waste Grows Ever Higher: Study (apnews.com) 66

Posted by msmash from the growing-challenges dept.
The world's mountain of discarded flat-screen TVs, cellphones and other electronic goods grew to a record high last year, according to an annual report released Thursday. New submitter Splyncryth writes: The U.N.-backed study estimated the amount of e-waste that piled up globally in 2019 at 53.6 million metric tonnes (59.1 million tons) - almost 2 million metric tons more than the previous year. The authors of the study calculated the combined weight of all dumped devices with a battery or a plug last year was the equivalent of 350 cruise ships the size of the Queen Mary 2. Among all the discarded plastic and silicon were large amounts of copper, gold and other precious metals -- used for example to conduct electricity on circuit boards. While about a sixth of it was recycled, the remainder of those valuable components -- worth about $57 billion -- weren't reclaimed, the study found.
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World's Pile of Electronic Waste Grows Ever Higher: Study More

World's Pile of Electronic Waste Grows Ever Higher: Study

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  • One solution (Score:5, Insightful)

    by thadtheman ( 4911885 ) on Thursday July 02, 2020 @02:47PM (#60254930)
    ban nonreplaceable rechargeable batteries.

    • They certainly they have no place in consumer electronics. I could understand it for low-volume special purpose devices for medical, research, and industry.

      Throwing out phones every 3 years because the software stops getting security updates doesn't help matters either.

      Finally, the lack of an infrastructure to process this waste back into useful materials is sorely lacking. Almost anything can be extracted, if you are willing to spend the energy on it. I understand it may not be not economical to extract ev

      • Re:One solution (Score:5, Funny)

        by lactose99 ( 71132 ) on Thursday July 02, 2020 @03:08PM (#60255006)

        Indeed

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Shaitan ( 22585 )

        "Throwing out phones every 3 years because the software stops getting security updates doesn't help matters either."

        There was a time this was a necessary evil because hardware was advancing that quickly. Margins were low, older technology rapidly dropped in price and tools to repair and service older generations quickly passed to consumers.

        Hardware manufacturers have done everything they can to put a stop to all these things and while they maintain the illusion the hardware is improving and build planned ob

        • The EU tried to enforce a single phone charging standard and you saw how many freedom-minded folk came out of the woodwork to dump on that in the name of free commerce. I really don't think mandatory software support would get the push needed for that to happen.

      • Forget phones as those likely get recycled. how about all the personal items like electric shavers & razers? most dont let you replace their batteries.

        • I think my hair clippers are 15 years old. I can't image that I will replace them very frequently. Once they break, there should be some copper wire worth recovering in that old school technology. The bakelite case isn't recyclable though.

          I think those vibrating toothbrushes are a bad idea. I believe most people throw them away with the battery still installed.

          • Everything with a battery should be able to be opened; battery and specialized components removed, even if the device cannot be put back together.

      • They certainly they have no place in consumer electronics. I could understand it for low-volume special purpose devices for medical, research, and industry.

        Throwing out phones every 3 years because the software stops getting security updates doesn't help matters either.

        The electronics manufacturers, particularly phone manufacturers, have a existential financial incentive to force consumers to purchase new devices on a periodic basis. If the desired result is reducing consumer purchases, then the impetus will have to come from a source other than the manufacturers themselves. Theoretically the consumers could vote with their pocketbooks to induce more environmentally friendly products, but this effect has yet to happen in reality.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by bjwest ( 14070 )

        Without a way to initiate a new trash-mining industry, we're going to keep trying to see how high we can stack shit.

        Don't worry about that, trash mining will be a great why your grand children or great grandchildren to dig out a living. There are plenty of landfills scattered all over the world with god knows what in them just waiting for the day natural resources in their natural environment are depleted.

      • Or you non-replacable battery starts to bloat.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        ...Without a way to initiate a new trash-mining industry, we're going to keep trying to see how high we can stack shit.

        Corporations are making billions without being held accountable. The upper class runs away with the money and leaves the middle class to pay for the mess and the lower class to live in it.

        Selfish, irresponsible and affluent people are the problem.

        • Selfish, irresponsible and affluent people are the problem.

          invent a 3D printer that can convert discarded electronics into guillotines.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Shaitan ( 22585 )

      Just replace the pointless war on drugs with the war on planned obsolescence. Kill racism, save the environment, and stave off anti-consumerism at the same time.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Ichijo ( 607641 )

      Or at least charge a disposal fee that's higher than an identical product with replaceable batteries.

      And on products with proprietary replaceable batteries, charge a disposal fee that's higher than an identical product with standardized replaceable batteries such as the beloved 18650 lithium-ion cell.

    • Yes - try replacing batteries in Bose QC 35 noise cancelling headphones. When the rechargeable battery is depleted you are supposed to throw £300 headphones away.

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Correct me if I'm wrong here but I think a bigger problem is lead-free solder. Tin alloy solder doesn't hold up nearly as well and often electronics will fail because the solder joint fractures from thermal expansion or developers whiskers that end up causing a short circuit and magic smoke.

      The end result is that many people just throw out their electronics after a couple of years when the inevitable failure happens instead of fixing it. So those who pushed for lead free solder in the early 1990's for the s

      • I agree. I’ve fixed several printers and laptop computers by putting the circuit boards in a toaster oven to remelt the ball grid array.

        I’m sure those 185 lb. Sony 37” CRT flat glass TVs would keep working well into the next century.

        • It may be better to recycle what you can out of them and still junk them though. They consumed plenty of electricity.

      • It seems they've got that mostly sorted out by now, but from about 2006-2012 or so this was a big problem. I saw lots of computers from the early DDR2/PCI-Express days junked for various flaky, hard to troubleshoot hardware issues. At least with the SDRAM/DDR/AGP generation of computers prior to this, when they failed it was often bad capacitors which were relatively easy to troubleshoot and replace if you were so inclined.

    • I have wondered about having the cost of disposal for an item as part of the price, sort of like bottles that have a deposit on them so they wind up with a recycler, not in the garbage. From there, even if the disposal tech is costly, like thermal depolymerization, it is feasible to be used to turn an electronic item back to usable rare earths and the plastic back to short chain monomers. Things like lithium batteries even more so.

  • The end of life of Windows 7, Androids getting only a few updates or none at all and of course Apple throwing all their intel Macs away in a few years. Even Mozilla is abandoning Macs from only 2015 with Firefox 78. There's a reason I recommend browsers like Mypal and New Moon as they allow 20 year old computers to still access modern websites.

    • Re:Abandoned software updates an issue (Score:4, Interesting)

      by xack ( 5304745 ) on Thursday July 02, 2020 @03:14PM (#60255034)
      And another thing, many Linux distros are throwing away their reputation as being good on old hardware by requiring UEFI, a standard became mainstream only after Windows 8 was released, locking out many Windows 7 computers looking for an end of life upgrade. Yet Linux users like using older Thinkpads so they are getting locked out of certain distros. Even Fedora is considering requiring UEFI.

    • People aren't putting old electronics in the trash because of lack of support. People are putting old electronics in the trash because of the lack of focus on recycling.

      When things are properly recycled, the problem is resolved. Old tech stops being supported because it is physically incapable of keeping up. The biggest bottlenecks on old machines are the data transfer rates. There's a reason modern modems have multi-core CPUs in them.

      It's more important that old tech is turned into new tech than we kee

      • Comment removed based on user account deletion

        • I still see plenty of those in various dumpsters. Not as much as I used to - I assume mostly because the majority them have been disposed of already by now.

          Recently around here they had a community clean-up day, where you got to spend well over an hour in line for the privilege of paying to get rid of stuff like that. It's no wonder people pitch that stuff into the trash even though you're not supposed to.

  • If they spread the waste out over a larger area, then the pile wouldn't be growing higher!

    (At least for now.)

  • So, as long as we keep adding to the pile, but not taking away from the pile, the pile will grow ever bigger. This is not news.
    We need to look at how to take away from the pile. Perhaps right to repair legislation, making devices easier to repair, etc. may help.

    • Another problem is products that are hard-wired to work with a single proprietary web service. When the people that offer the service decide to obsolete the service, the hardware is now junk---regardless of its physical condition. This needs to stop.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by PPH ( 736903 )

      We need to look at how to take away from the pile.

      Not from the bottom. Or it will collapse.

  • I'm getting tired of sitting at home, and it sounds like it might make for a fun road trip.

  • ...you have to distribute it a bit to make it smaller.

  • I haven't done chemistry in a long while, but why can't we just toss this pile of electronics in gigantic furnaces, burn off all the plastics and volatiles, concentrate the rest, extract the main metals, then the rare metals with applied chemistry, etc... It's probably richer in rare ore than the average mine.
    • What do you do with the smoke that makes?

    • Seems like a good idea... until you look at what actually would happen. When you burn things with metal, not all the metal stays put, a small amount will be lifted out and recombined with the hot air, CO2 and noxious gases. The problem is not that they get spread around but rather that it animals breathe it in. That include humans for sure but if you continue this cycle you end up with your plants and livestock all contaminated with it. At this point, you're eating these metals which build up and cause

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by dargaud ( 518470 )
        Of course open air furnaces are a bad idea. But IIRC there are now furnaces in controlled gasses, or even low pressure.
  • I'm now going to be that dude in all the futuristic movies that builds robots or bionics from scavenged parts from tech junkyards.

  • Here's a good video [youtube.com] on how to recover gold from electronics.

  • Metal and glass (Score:3)

    by kackle ( 910159 ) on Thursday July 02, 2020 @03:45PM (#60255132)
    My preference for (non-e-waste) incandescent light bulbs doesn't seem so dumb now.
  • ... electronics manufactures must take back their outdated/broken electronics to be recycled. For instance, when purchasing a new phone the old phone being replaced will be taken back by the manufacturer and credit given to the customer when purchasing the new one. And make it LAW that those returned electronics must have at least 80% of their materials recycled. It's time to start holding these companies accountable for creating electronics that are purposely disposable. Non replaceable lithium batteries a
    • The price of a product should include a recycling charge that is part of what would be paid to a recycler. It could work like a deposit on a bottle.
  • Buy more shit and put it in a hole. Buy more shit and put it in a hole. Buy...

  • E-Waste Recycling (Score:3, Informative)

    by DarkFall ( 14299 ) on Thursday July 02, 2020 @05:20PM (#60255390)

    E-Waste recycling is a real thing, and there are Canadian companies making real progress and this field and doing it in a low-toxicity way: Enviroleach and Mineworx. They've got production lines up and running, but due to the global pandemic messing up with global supply chains, the momentary issue is getting consistent deliveries of e-waste scrap. As they scale up and build plants in different parts of the world, this will be less of an issue. They are also working on recoveries from things like catalytic converters.

  • Require them to take back old products and packaging; make them deal with the recycling. Sure Prices will be higher, that's just business.

    But I don't mean just electronics producers like Apple, Samsung, etc. I mean ALL manufacturers, include bottled water companies, include plastic packaging materials. Then that glass bottle or plain cardboard box won't look so bad, will it?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by k6mfw ( 1182893 )

      plain cardboard box won't look so bad, will it?

      I remember back in the days when those cardboard boxes make excellent spaceships. Back in the 60s a friend and I built a spaceship from boxes seized behind appliance stores. Also christmas lights make fantastic avionics. We even endured meteor storms while zooming around the solar system.

      • The cardboard boxes survived meteor storms? Geez, what came in those boxes - 60's Chevy's? ;)

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by k6mfw ( 1182893 )
          Never underestimate imagination capabilities of children. Boxes were midsize, reassembled to be large enough for occupancy but need to be small enough to fit on the front patio. Besides surviving meteor storms, our spaceship never had software problems, no cost overruns like SLS, and we never had to do battle with congress for funding.

  • 2½ words: Right To Repair (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Dr.Wizard ( 5905580 ) on Thursday July 02, 2020 @06:35PM (#60255686)
    Manufacturers need to: Stop gluing things together. Stop using hidden snap tabs. Stop using weird 'security' screws. Stop using the DCMA as an excuse. And start: Making service manuals available. Making spare parts available, at a reasonable price.

  • Old guy here, I remember the days when TV sets were so valuable that burglars risk breaking their backs to steal these things. When the flat screens came along selling for thousands of dollars also making target for thieves. Now total waste of time stealing those things as need to sell at a big discount compared to brand new, what is that? 10 bucks? Better off buying it new, also get the remote. I see so many TV sets dumped in the dumpster, big screen models with all kinds of nasty stuff inside heading for

  • I used to love the newer stuff when I was younger, but not anymore. I want cheaper and free, better quality, stability, etc. so I still use older usable stuff. I still use my over decade old PCs, PS/2 hardwares, VGA, DVI, 3.5mm analog speakers, optical discs, HDDs, etc. Some stuff I am forced to get newer stuff though. :(

    • The newer stuff isn't much better in A/V quality either. 4k often looks eerie while old regular DVDs have a "smoother" quality to them. Kids growing up with the latest might think otherwise. But stability is key - not with my time to mess around with changing devices all the time. There is peacefulness in having whatever setup you like function for years before replacement.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by antdude ( 79039 )

        Excactly! I am sure they will say and do the same thing when they're old like us. Haha.

  • How about a right to repair law so third party repairs could be made and at least slow down the electronic equipment march to the dump.

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