This is awful on so many levels. These images should be postered around the headquarters of all major electronics manufacturers. They should be used in courts as prosecution evidence to force these companies to comply with repairability regulations, and force governments to enact stricter regulations and higher fines. They can start by making planned obsolescence illegal.
What makes you assume planned obsolescence is at play here, and not just regular old obsolescence? I suspect the two-decade-old large-format CRTs on display in that shop aren't there due to a lack of replacement parts.
I'm sure that it's _part_ of the problem, no? What percentage of those tons of electronic waste do you think includes smartphones from the last 15 years? Do you think all of it is reused and recycled before it reaches these dump sites?
EDIT: Somewhere around 5 billion phones in 2022 alone[1].
It sure sounds right to me too, but I'm looking at the photos and I don't see any phones. Actually, I don't see much I'd consider using, even if it were still working.
That's a problem too, but it's different from what you're describing.
idk, that looked like an awful lot of ewaste and 0 car tires. Probably just need to borrow the deposit system that car tires use where you pay a large fee (not the 5 cents that plastic bottles use) when buying tires unless you return an equivalent amount.
There's wayyyyy fewer than there used to be. Now they get carved into coal-like pieces and burned for the most part. More heat value per pound than coal.
> In the United States in 2017, about 43% of scrap tires (1,736,340 tons or 106 million tires) were burnt as tire-derived fuel. Cement manufacturing was the largest user of TDF, at 46%, pulp and paper manufacturing used 29% and electric utilities used 25%. Another 25% of scrap tires were used to make ground rubber, 17% were disposed of in landfills and 16% had other uses
It's usually collecting them all in one place that's the hard part nowadays (and if you've managed to create a tire dump, you've done the hard work)
You have looked at a problem and proposed a bunch of completely irrelevant solutions.
What happens when something is repaired? Components are replaced and discarded. What happens eventually when the device wears out? It is is discarded.
If we did everything you listed, it wouldn't even appreciably change the volume of material discarded, since eventually all manufactured items wear out.
And of course, what is missing in this little diatribe? Any solution to the question of what to do with discarded electronics. You aren't solving the core problem.
So what’s the core problem, and what’s your proposal to solve it?
Your logic seems questionable. The article mentions discarded components being recovered for their materials, e.g., copper & plastic. And when something is repaired, by definition some of the components are reused and not discarded. If it takes twice as long to wear out completely, then the replacement purchase rate drops to 50%. Why do you claim that’s not even partially addressing the core problem?
Can you please not post in the flamewar style to HN? Instead, please make your substantive points without swipes. For example, if you had posted just the second and third paragraphs of your comment here, it would have been fine.
Look, I'm not saying that this would solve all of these problems. I don't even claim to have the expertise to propose potential solutions. But speaking as a consumer, focusing on the source of what causes them might be a good place to start.
But I'm sure that your expertise and infinite wisdom must be able to produce better ideas to fix this, which I'm eager to hear.
It is not pedantic or contrarian, though. The points they are making are real issues.
The right to repair is important, but from an environmental point of view it is not that relevant. Besides, what the current demographic and economic trajectory of the world, huge populations are accessing the middle classes, with the associated increase in consumption. Even with perfect repairability (which does not solve the issue of discarded parts or plain broken devices, the amount of which is proportional to the number of devices in use), things physically cannot get better. The best lever we have right now is to reduce consumption. It’s about as credible as perfect repairability, but is much more effective. “Do we really need these 6 phones, 3 computers, 2 cars, and microprocessors in every light bulb” is a more pressing question than “can I fix my phone with a torx screwdriver”?
Repairability is a good thing, but it is only part of the battle, and not the most critical.
> The quote was "completely irrelevant". How is that not contrarianism?
That was a slight hyperbole. It is not “completely irrelevant”, merely irrelevant. Contrarianism implies bad faith and knee-jerk reactions. They provided arguments, which you are free to debate or question.
> Ah, consumerism. And what magical lever do we have to reduce that?
Well, realistically? None. Not before it gets significantly worse anyway. It’s still more realistic than getting out of this hole by repairing stuff. The orders of magnitude are just not there.
Again, repairing devices is a good thing. But it’s not a panacea and won’t solve that specific problem.
