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Which part of them is particularly environmentally sustainable? The metals and plastics used in their manufacture is pretty minimal compared to cars or home ap
by IsaacL 11y ago
Which part of them is particularly environmentally sustainable?
The metals and plastics used in their manufacture is pretty minimal compared to cars or home appliances.
Their power consumption is low compared to heating or lighting (a macbook consumes power equivalent to about two lightbulbs, and most devices use less).
Earth metals represent probably the biggest environmental impact of consumer electronics. They're not actually rare, just expensive to mine, so there isn't an issue of sustainability. (As in, the earth metals aren't going to run out any time soon. There's some nasty environmental damage in the vicinity of the mines, but that's limited to a particular area).
I'm trying to fathom the reasoning behind this comment. Is it that because electronics are really useful and beneficial, they must have a proportional cost?
- jmnicolas 11y agoDid you mean "unsustainable" in your first sentence ? It seems to me that even at our current level of mass consumerism our lifestyles wouldn't be sustainable for more than a few decades. I'll give it to you that it's more a hunch than a an opinion backed by facts. You're talking about cars or home appliances but generally we have a few of them. Each one of us will probably have thousands of IOT "things". Billions of humans having thousands of things that are discarded and replaced by new ones when they fail or are not modern enough is not, in my opinion, a recipe for sustainability. For the record I counted 17 sensors just for my house alarm and I didn't go overboard, if I hadn't be budget constrained I would have put much more than that.
- pavel_lishin 11y agoHow often are you replacing those sensors?
- jmnicolas 11y agoThe alarm is only one year old, but I wouldn't be surprised if in 5 years the company would tell me they're obsolete and I have to buy the new ones to get better protection.
- duaneb 11y agoI think sustainability plays into people throwing out electronics instead of repurposing them. > earth metals aren't going to run out any time soon The fact that they will ever run out is generally not sustainable. You really think our use of them is going to DECREASE? Unlikely, unless people take conservation of materials more seriously than the convenience of throwing away rare metals.