The World’s E-Waste Has Reached a Crisis Point
The World’s E-Waste Has Reached a Crisis Point
A new UN report finds that humanity is generating 137 billion pounds of TVs, smartphones, and other e-waste a year—and recycling less than a quarter of it.
You're viewing a single thread.
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.
@ordellrb @eugenia The other place the motherboards of old phones could be repurposed is in embedded processors.
Most home appliances feature embedded processors and motherboards these days. Many commercial and industrial buildings and structures feature a range of embedded sensors.
In many cases, a repurposed three-year-old or even six-year-old iPhone or Samsung Galaxy motherboard is overkill in terms of being capable for these kinds of applications.
Especially if they're reflashed with an embedded device-focussed operating system, such as QNX.
Instead of making new motherboards for embedded devices, why not repurpose old consumer tech instead?
@ajsadauskas @ordellrb @eugenia Quite a few of us have done that through the last two decades or more. Why not?! If it's still useful, use it. I used a few older computers as print servers for businesses even back in the 1990's.
The issue is the price of new hardware vs the hourly wages of people who are capable of reprogramming old stuff. If you are going to pay $100/h to get old stuff working and buying new stuff costs $20 then it's cheaper to throw it out and buy new stuff.
@etbe @ajsadauskas so it's on quantity. If you reprogram one device for 500 dollars and then reflash with that firmware other 1000 devices it will be much cheaper than new devices.
Reprogramming the 1000 other devices won't be as hard as the first one but it won't be trivial as they may be all on different versions of the software and there may be hardware variations too.
Just to triage the devices and determine which ones are good enough is going to be non trivial.
@etbe definitely. That's why ve have internet - to connect many users of given devices. Like entuziasts of retro gaming consoles: some dudes spend time of reprogramming others help with sharing - fixing - adapting.
@mcSlibinas @etbe Worth noting that in the six months after Apple releases the thinnest, best iPhone ever each year, it would receive several million two-year-old iPhones as trade-ins.
So you could theoretically reflash several million units of nearly identical hardware with embedded Linux (or QNX), remove the batteries (and screens?).
You would then have several million near-identical motherboards ready for second life embedded in appliances or sensors.
@mcSlibinas @etbe Really good point.
The development time and cost is an overhead. That's divided between the number of units you produce.
If the programming costs are $100k and you produce one unit, then that unit costs $100k.
But if you flash the same software on to 1 million units, then it's just 10 cents per unit.
Worth remembering that millions of people junking their two-year-old iPhones and Samsung Galaxies at roughly the same time.
I think the broader underlying issue is that our economy is optimised for labour productivity, rather than making the most out of finite environmental resources.
It really should be the other way around.
@etbe @ajsadauskas True.
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.