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And that is exactly why we need more regulation on this area, because it’s NOT sustainable right now.
This was why the EU made it mandatory to use USB-C, so we only need few chargers for everything in our home. This alone were tons of e-waste reduced each year.
We need this thinking in other areas too.
The most fucked up part is that, if I could, I’d happily take in some of that trash to repair and recirculate it, but corporations make that as difficult as possible so as to not hurt their profits.
Shout-out to framework laptops for repairable, upgradeable, and reusable components.
Parts are expensive and profit margins are thin. What’s stopping us from buying parts on eBay and reselling those phones for profit? You pretty much end up with the cost of the phone to repair the phone.
We need phones that don’t break so easily and we should be able to repair them and replace the battery, at the very least.
we have phones that don’t break easily and we can repair them and replace the battery; with long-term support.
what we need are laws that makes it mandatory for all.
They’re a dying breed, however.
fairphone is doing pretty well. their new one is quite competitive spec-wise too.
And Pandas are doing great, I saw one in the zoo.
I feel a law that would go a long way would be to force companies to release code, drivers, and designs of any product they no longer support. That includes Intellectual Property. If you no longer support a product, then you don’t need the IP used on it.
We either get everything we need to use EOL products however we want, or companies support products much longer to protect their IP.
E waste is full of precious metals. You’d think someone would figure out how to recover them.
'Tis the nature of Economics. -If recycling for money were easy and profitable then it’s highly likely that someone would already be doing it really well and competition would be jumping in to reap some of the rewards. -That said, you will always need a ‘Pioneer’ to pave the way.
Don’t look into that recycling either. It’s just arbitrage all the way to the acid vat man.
The laws don’t go far enough to protect usability of both the hardware and software. For example, the new EU law about software, only requires smart TVs to have software updates for only 5 years (my own $2k Sony TV only gave me software updates for its AndroidTV for only 2 years! – these days I don’t connect it to the internet at all due to security problems). Who throws a TV every 5 years? IMO, it should ask for 6 years for full updated phones, plus 3 additional years for security updates, computers should go to 12 years, and TVs to 15 years.
Personally, I’ve been gathering old laptops and towers from friends and family and “upgrade” them with Debian and XFce. As long as they have more than 450 Passmark CPU points, and 2+ GB of RAM, these machines can still serve a purpose. So far, I’ve repurposed 12 such machines and gave them away back to their owner, my mom, my nieces, and two of my cousins. Even on machines with only 2 GB of RAM, it’s enough to run a browser with up to 3 tabs before touching the swap file (Debian/XFce clean-boots to about 800 MBs of RAM). That works just fine for someone like my mom who doesn’t even how to open a new tab, or for a young kid researching for school.
I would do the same with old phones too, but most of the models bought here in Greece are cheap Chinese Xiaomi/Huawei/realme phones, so LineageOS doesn’t support them. That’s the biggest travesty these days, since very few people buy computers now. Think if Google could ask as part of android license that all phones have usb-out for monitors, and all these phones can then be transformed like Samsung’s desktop DEX OS. I mean, most phones today have 4+ GB of RAM and 128 GB internal memory, just like an old laptop would. It should be able to transform itself into a desktop OS on demand and extend its life and its purpose.
I had this exact idea but for old Consoles: every PS4 could be a perfectly capable x86 Computer, 8GB of Ram and a AMD CPU, enough Power for Office and Web for a long Time. Only Problem the Software.
It would be good if the EU could make USB-C docking functionality a requirement for all phones the way they made USB-C power a requirement. I doubt that Google could do it even if they wanted to.
As an aside Google REALLY doesn’t want companies to follow the example of Huawei with HarmonyOS. If any big player said “we will license HarmonyOS or develop our own thing if Google makes us do something we don’t like” then Google would give in.
Phones for desktop use is something I’m working on now. Not for old devices but for ultra portable work. I just paid $215AU for a Note9 with 8G of RAM. Until a couple of months ago my main laptop had 8G of RAM, that’s enough to do most non-server things you want to do with a computer.
People living in high-income countries own, on average, 109 EEE devices per capita
What the fuck?!?
Apple: No no no, it’s fine! Keep buying a brand new phone every 2 years! Oh, you don’t want to? Well, we’ll make them irreparable, lock down the software so that you can’t revive it or reuse it in any way, claim it’s for “security”, and make sure that repairing it costs as much as a new phone.
But believe us, we’re the good guys and are doing our best to be sustainable 😉Graphics card manufacturers: listen up, that graphics card you bought just a few months ago is already outdated. Never mind that it could be full speed, but we artificially gimped it in hardware and software to sell more units. Responsibility to handle the trash you say? Lol, that’d cost money! Let your government ship them to a third-world country and dump it in a slum.
Btw, we’re sustainable, and don’t you forget it!appliance manufacturers: Repairability is for chumps. We need those fat stacks! The day your warranty ends, your device breaks 😘 Planned obsolesce baby! Buy a new appliance you bloody consumer.
IoT manufacturers: Who, us? No, we don’t exist. Look over there. Nothing to see here.
And so on and so forth.
- #opensourceAfterDeprecation : you deprecate or stop supporting a device? nice, now release all the source code, designs, and schemata to the public
- #greenTax : a tax is levied for the estimated impact to the environment your device has
- #recycleByDesign : all your devices need to have a planned recycling route and if somebody else has to figure it out, you pay a nice tax
109 devices per capita? I just walked through the house looking at what my partner and I have that plugs in. We don’t have 109 together. And it isn’t like I we don’t have stuff. Mesh wifi routers, camping gear. Heck we even have a refrigerator. What do people collect?
Anyone have a non-paywalled link to this article?
Edit: Never mind.
