E-waste from trashed electric devices is piling up and recycling isn't keeping pace, UN says
E-waste from trashed electric devices is piling up and recycling isn't keeping pace, UN says
U.N. agencies have warned that waste from electronics is piling up worldwide while recycling rates remain low and are likely to fall even further.
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/13401615
Something that should be considered when buying your micromobility device: Try to get something that will last and not end up as trash.
Man, I'm getting tired for all this corporate apologists.
Yeah, it's easy to just say "customer should do this, customer should do that"
Why don't we ask why the customers are like that in the first place. Let's start with the fact that most consumer devices only get a few years of support.
What happens after that support ends? At best you'll be vulnerable to security exploits. At worst, you won't be able to use it in the modern world (3G, anyone?).
While I cannot blame the technological advancement, I do blame the fact that vendors like to make their stuff like black boxes.
Screen or battery broke? Gotta pay hundreds of dollars to get that specific part that doesn't work on other model (of the same brand even). Kernel 6.6 is the new LTS? Too bad your board is stuck with 4.19 due to all the vendor-specific stuff. Wanna try to embody the spirit of open source and get that vendor-specific to mainline? Too bad you cannot run it to see that it works because we locked the bootloader for reasons you can't understand.
All that bullshit, and we're still the one to blame?
To be fair, 3G cellular is technology that is more than 20 years old now, superseded by 4G which is almost 15 years old. It's not like there haven't been viable replacements for 3G for more than a decade before it was retired.
Something that should be considered when buying your micromobility device: Try to get something that will last and not end up as trash.
Doesn't make sense to do it at the consumer level. It's easy for anyone who doesn't care to just not do it. And the information to try to regulate products isn't available to individual consumers, and is too large of a task to track.
The costs and drawbacks should be priced into the product; one should just worry about the price.
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If mining has negative externalities that are not already priced in, then the country doing the mining should charge to account for that.
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If disposal has negative externalities that are not already priced in, then the country doing the mining should charge to account for that.
Both of those countries already have incentives to do that, don't run into the misincentive problem.
If you want to change anything at the consumer level, it'd make sense to change pricing on waste disposal. Mining (should) already be incorporated in that, and if it isn't, it's not the consumer who should change that.
On the other hand, right now, essentially all items cost the same amount to dispose, and it's by volume, aside from maybe hazardous goods. You want a consumer to take into account the cost of disposal at purchase time.
Problem is that the consumer has an incentive to just dump whatever into the trash can, and it's hard to enforce improper disposal. So you can't charge 'em -- or at least not very effectively, unless you're going to have very severe penalties, given the low rate at which you'd catch someone -- for improperly disposing of something.
A better route: have a surcharge attached to a product at sale time associated with the cost of a product that is improperly-disposed-of, then provide customers a rebate when they dispose of it if they recycle it. Like, you don't want CFLs disposed of in the garbage because of mercury. That's a negative externality attached to putting it in a landfill. You charge more at sale time, then the consumer gets a rebate when he drops 'em off with a hazardous waste disposal company.
But what about if you aren't worried about negative externalities from improper disposal, but rather positive externalities from recycling, like, the value of the recovered material? With recycling, you don't have to do anything for positive externalities -- the incentive already exists, which is why the scrap industry is there. If it's worth it to a recycling company and individual to recycle, they'll already do it.
A better route: have a surcharge attached to a product at sale time associated with the cost of a product that is improperly-disposed-of, then provide customers a rebate when they dispose of it if they recycle it.
That used to be the norm for glass bottles, now everything's plastic.
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Reduce, Reuse... only then Recycle. How about penalizing companies for imposing software caps? As long as the hardware is capable, i should be able to continue to use it and upgrade the software. At the very least unlock the hardware once it's out of warranty.
It is ridiculously difficult to find stuff that isn't trash. I have the money to spend on better quality stuff, but for some things it is just hard to find stuff that is made to last.
And apple isn't helping with activation locks, and business accounts that never release their products from their account when handed off to recyclers.
Most recycling isn't currently profitable without some kind of subsidy or legislation pushing it (exceptions: some metals, paper, maybe glass). If dealing with the increasing mountains of dead electronics made money, it would be getting done on a much larger scale than individual junk-pickers in the developing world scavenging in dumps. In addition to reducing the volume of waste being created, we need to provide a market for the recycled material that pays enough to push financing of new plants to do recycling at scale (and make sure that the recycling doesn't create negative externalities of its own).
In addition to reducing the volume of waste being created
That will amount to a cynical coercion of the public in some way. I'm being forced to work for free in the form of sorting waste at point of disposal, and worrying about fines, all so that industry's line can continue going up. So that plastics production growth can largely continue on trend. Paper and plastic recycling are like cycling up the hill of environmental conservation in top gear. Loads of pedal revolutions that (ultimately) only slow the rate of decline back down the hill.
If the product has a high energy cost involved in new production, that's when industry actually does the right thing. Aluminum is a great example. Generous deposit schemes are found all over the world. They're voluntary and well managed. But paper and plastic are cheap to manufacture by comparison, and the costs can be passed through to the consumer, so industry and government conspire to do just that (the mechanisms of which are then greenwashed).
This is the best summary I could come up with:
NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — U.N. agencies have warned that waste from electronics is piling up worldwide while recycling rates remain low and are likely to fall even further.
The agencies were referring to “e-waste,” which is defined as discarded devices with a plug or battery, including cellphones, electronic toys, TVs, microwave ovens, e-cigarettes, laptop computers and solar panels.
It is expected to fall to 20% by the end of the decade because of “staggering growth” of such waste due to higher consumption, limited repair options, shorter product life cycles, growing “electronification” of society, and inadequate e-waste management infrastructure, the agencies said.
“The latest research shows that the global challenge posed by e-waste is only going to grow,” said Cosmas Luckyson Zavazava, head of the ITU telecommunication development bureau.
At the Dandora dumpsite where garbage collected from the Kenyan capital of Nairobi ends up — even though a court declared it full over a generation ago — scavengers try to earn a living by picking through rubbish for e-waste that can be sold to businesses as recycled material.
Report authors acknowledged that many people in the developing world pay their bills through harvesting such e-waste, and called for them to be trained and equipped to make such work safer.
The original article contains 741 words, the summary contains 208 words. Saved 72%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!