6 ms·

The e-waste mountains – in pictures

101 points by endswapper 10y ago

staticelf 10y ago
This is fucking crazy and why the world should really switch economic systems asap. Why do I have to buy new shit if 1 thing gets broke? Repairs should be the standard. Why are all phones bought as one piece? Laptops? I want to have the components as modules that is easy to switch or upgrade. The problem with this in our economic system is that it's not rewarded and actually not feasible due to lack of profit. More stuff like the fairphone (https://shop.fairphone.com/en/ https://shop.fairphone.com/en/) please.
- endswapper 10y ago
  Fairphone looks interesting. So did Google's Ara. I agree with your point that it is the economic system. However, I do think it is feasible, but it is complicated because it requires cooperation with manufacturers, governments, recyclers and consumers. If you didn't see it, there is a recent, existing conversation on the economic system here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12733659 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12733659
- raisedbyninjas 10y ago
  It may be six of one, half dozen of the other, but the important issue isn't rewarding repairable and durable goods. It's that we need to penalize externalizing costs. The electronics, energy, and meat industries come to mind first. I could get behind modular phones if they weren't 50% bigger than an integrated alternative and more expensive.
  - weavie 10y ago
    I guess every one is different. I would happily take a 100% size increase if it meant I could upgrade and fix it myself.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
  - ChuckMcM 10y ago
    I think its the externalities that kill it. A fully documented and repairable computer would add 30 - 40% to it's end user cost. That cost comes from the requirement to track changes at the component level back to the individual replaceable subsystems (FRUs). I also note with some irony that there are ways to dispose of these electronics which will take all of the people out of the equation. Incineration and refinement is a thing. There is a plant in Milpitas CA that can take electronics, grind it through chompers into powder, material separate the grind through a series of steps, and then incinerate the "light" stuff, and refine the metals. One of their things is getting the gold and some rare earths out of chips and circuit boards through their process. Then there are Apple's "disassembly" robots. Which take apart things, that makes for better aluminum recovery in Apple gear.
- tcfunk 10y ago
  Interesting to me that they are on "Fairphone 2". Doesn't that defeat the purpose of this?
- pingswept 10y ago
  Here's the best current attempt at what you're imagining: https://www.crowdsupply.com/eoma68/micro-desktop https://www.crowdsupply.com/eoma68/micro-desktop
- FussyZeus 10y ago
  You say this as if there isn't a widespread base of consumers who don't want to tinker, don't want to upgrade and don't want to assemble and the only problem is manufacturers don't want to make modular phones. Frankly a modular phone sounds godawful. I work all week and build stuff in my spare time, I don't want yet another thing I need to maintain and that's why I have an iPhone. There's no reason we can't have proper disposal methods and environmentally sound manufacturing -AND- have single-piece prebuilt devices. I'd argue that making stuff modular wouldn't even solve that problem in the first place, you'd just have piles and piles of PIECES of phones instead of piles and piles of phones.
  - TeMPOraL 10y ago
    > I'd argue that making stuff modular wouldn't even solve that problem in the first place, you'd just have piles and piles of PIECES of phones instead of piles and piles of phones. Presumably, with better parts standardization, you'd have companies buying off broken phones and reassembling the still working components into new phones. Sort of what happens in Shenzhen, but on a larger scale.
- jasonkostempski 10y ago
  "not feasible due to lack of profit" Is that really true or is it just that they can make more doing it the way they are? I'd love to see a big company that boast about the money they're not making because they have standards they're not willing to give up on.
- leejoramo 10y ago
  The waste I see in these photos is not one-piece phones or laptops. They are the components of desktops. In theory most of these cases, power supplies, mother boards and cables could be reused.
  - darod 10y ago
    these are computers from at least 15 years ago. wait a few more when people start throwing out the "hand me down" phones.
- stickfigure 10y ago
  I want to have the components as modules that is easy to switch or upgrade. This was standard for computers back in the 80s and 90s and has become less popular over time. The problem is twofold: 1) all components tend to become obsolete at the same time and 2) the bus itself becomes obsolete. So even the most modular computers - which cost more, were physically larger, and contained more e-waste - tended to get replaced wholesale anyway. Computer upgradability is a myth.
- medius 10y ago
  Repairing is one part, but the software "upgrades" are also responsible for this. I have a 3-4 years old iPad. It's in perfect condition. No hardware problems at all and very minimal scratches. I take good care of it. But Apple keeps forcing me to update iOS to newer and newer versions. Also, the apps stop supporting the older OS. But upgrading it causes it to slow down. New iOS and app version seems to be bloated more and more. Even simple web-browsing is slow which used to be fine before the updates. I'm sticking to it for now, but it's slowly getting unusable and might end up in e-waste before its time.
- yekim 10y ago
  Thanks for posting re: the fairphone. Never heard of that before. Got any personal first hand experience with it?
gravypod 10y ago
I wish there was a way to sign up and say "I'll take your crap" for everything electronic. I just pick stuff up when I find it but it's pretty hard. If people could just say "I'm throwing out a powersupply" I'd head over and pick it up. Just pulling caps out of that and selling them at hamfests could make you some nice pocket change.
- vwcx 10y ago
  In certain large US cities, posting on Freecycle and Craigslist have gotten people to my apartment to pick up free things within a few hours.
- cdubzzz 10y ago
  So you've got the caps taken care of. What about the remaining parts of the power supply? Say you do sign up and get 1,000 power supplies. What do you do with them?
  - gravypod 10y ago
    Sell them for parts, sell them as working-refurbished, or build bench-top power supplies with them and sell those to hobbyists on the cheap? Also I don't need to take all of them and I'm surely not the only one interested. If 500 people take and use 2, that's all of the 1k saved.
- dspillett 10y ago
  I'd love to do that from the other side, and I've tried via freecycle, local facebook for sale or free groups, and so forth, but people are just irritating to deal with especially when you are giving things away for free: * They don't turn up when they say they will and don't bother to let you know that they can't make it * Arranging a time in the first place is a faf (they'll say they can collect any time, then reject the first few times you suggest * If I list things as "available to collect at <these times>" or "I can deliver by cycle to <this range of locations> at <these times>" the first few responses are are people asking if they can collect at a completely different time or if I can deliver to somewhere many miles further away * When you are having a clear out and getting rid of a lot of stuff and say "preference given to someone who wants to take it all in one go" (to save arranging several collections/drop-offs, without fail I get someone who says they want it all but when they turn up (or I travel out to drop-off) they've "changed their mind" and "can I just take <one specific item>?" * People ask questions that are already answered and get offended when you respond with "please read the original advert" or similar. * When you've updated the listing to indicate that the items are gone, for days I sometimes keep getting "do you still have this? Can I have it?" messages. And so on. As much as I hate sending things to landfill after the last few time I've tried to give spare parts or anything else away I've decided not to put up with the hassle in future, I just don't have the time to deal with people. > Just pulling caps out of that and selling them at hamfests could make you some nice pocket change. Would you really have the time to do that at enough scale to make it worth while (it would be quite a different matter to scavenging parts for your own projects) and nothing else you'd rather be doing with that time? Do you have enough space to store parts waiting to be processed? And a way to get rid of the unsalvageable left-overs (in many areas you'll need an appropriate commercial waste license, or should pay someone who has, as soon as you are disposing of anything beyond normal personal waste)?
gshakir 10y ago
The manufacturers should add in the cost of recycling and also process recycling themselves as part of the product lifecycle. Not an easy thing to implement.
- adrianN 10y ago
  Shipping to third world countries and letting the local "recycling" companies handle the dirty work is the way these regulations are currently complied with.
nsxwolf 10y ago
These pictures don't do anything to indicate the scale of the problem. I could probably fit all of that junk in my house (from floor to ceiling) How about some comparisons? Would the total pile of e-waste be Mt. Everest size, etc?
- danso 10y ago
  My thought exactly. I know that in a photo essay of things like a massive California wildfire, it's important to include people-level shots, but unless I'm missing a Next Page button, all of these photos are taken at such a limited perspective that they could originate from any small town municipal dump. When I read the headline, I expected to see mountains and mountains of e-waste, with the affected residents looking like mere ants among the heaps.
runeb 10y ago
Chrome will not let me visit theguardian.com due to broken HTTPS (net::ERR_CERT_REVOKED)[1]. Anyone else seeing this? [1] http://imgur.com/a/i3bvo http://imgur.com/a/i3bvo
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- davidcollantes 10y ago
  I am seeing it. I can't see the images on Safari either, they show broken. It is saying the certificate was revoked.
- manwithaplan 10y ago
  Works fine here. The certificate I’m getting (‎49 f4 d4 f3 ca df 0a 4a 5a 54 f4 90) is issued to i.ssl.fastly.net and has 152 other alternative names, including DNS Name=theguardian.com DNS Name=*.theguardian.com
- pi-rat 10y ago
  Same problem, and I've been having the same issue with other sites. It's the after effects of Global Signs major screw up a couple of days ago [1]. They managed to revoke one of their own cross-signing certificates by mistake. We'll be seeing problems like this for a few more days until cache clears. [1] https://downloads.globalsign.com/acton/fs/blocks/showLandingPage/a/2674/p/p-008f/t/page/fm/0 https://downloads.globalsign.com/acton/fs/blocks/showLanding...
grownseed 10y ago
Perhaps we could start by penalizing companies like HP that actively participate to this waste by producing stuff like their shitty disposable printers (where buying new cartridges can cost more than buying a whole new printer). Likewise, we could also penalize phone providers who keep pushing new phones on people for absolutely no good reason (other than to line their pockets). Or maybe, and I know this is some kind of wild idea, we could require manufacturers to make interoperable parts that can actually be changed and switched between devices, regardless of brand. I don't know...
knightofmars 10y ago
http://thegeekchurch.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/Futurama-clip.png http://thegeekchurch.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/Futurama...
snake_plissken 10y ago
What's the feasibility of something like an arc furnace mixed with a fractal distillation tower mixed with a co-generation facility? You could throw all of the e-junk inside. The arc furnace would melt everything down, the metals would be separated via density differences, and then you use the excess heat to generate steam. For the plastics and PCB boards, which I imagine would all turn to gaseous forms, you could route the gas somewhere and precipitate out the various components.
- 1123335644546 10y ago
  Wow!
endswapper 10y ago
First, e-waste is not a "problem" it is a reality. Second, electronics manufacturers create, operate and pay for sophisticated e-waste recycling programs. These programs are built in to their business models and they are not externalized. Processes depend on the waste stream, but generally speaking waste is collected, disassembled, processed and separated then processed again in to raw materials. The program includes audits that ensure the materials go in to new products or raw materials rather than being landfilled. E-waste is a resource that deserves proper stewardship.

101 points by endswapper 10y ago

This is fucking crazy and why the world should really switch economic systems asap. Why do I have to buy new shit if 1 thing gets broke? Repairs should be the standard. Why are all phones bought as one piece? Laptops? I want to have the components as modules that is easy to switch or upgrade. The problem with this in our economic system is that it's not rewarded and actually not feasible due to lack of profit. More stuff like the fairphone (https://shop.fairphone.com/en/ https://shop.fairphone.com/en/) please.

endswapper 10y ago
Fairphone looks interesting. So did Google's Ara. I agree with your point that it is the economic system. However, I do think it is feasible, but it is complicated because it requires cooperation with manufacturers, governments, recyclers and consumers. If you didn't see it, there is a recent, existing conversation on the economic system here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12733659 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12733659
raisedbyninjas 10y ago
It may be six of one, half dozen of the other, but the important issue isn't rewarding repairable and durable goods. It's that we need to penalize externalizing costs. The electronics, energy, and meat industries come to mind first. I could get behind modular phones if they weren't 50% bigger than an integrated alternative and more expensive.
- weavie 10y ago
  I guess every one is different. I would happily take a 100% size increase if it meant I could upgrade and fix it myself.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
- ChuckMcM 10y ago
  I think its the externalities that kill it. A fully documented and repairable computer would add 30 - 40% to it's end user cost. That cost comes from the requirement to track changes at the component level back to the individual replaceable subsystems (FRUs). I also note with some irony that there are ways to dispose of these electronics which will take all of the people out of the equation. Incineration and refinement is a thing. There is a plant in Milpitas CA that can take electronics, grind it through chompers into powder, material separate the grind through a series of steps, and then incinerate the "light" stuff, and refine the metals. One of their things is getting the gold and some rare earths out of chips and circuit boards through their process. Then there are Apple's "disassembly" robots. Which take apart things, that makes for better aluminum recovery in Apple gear.
tcfunk 10y ago
Interesting to me that they are on "Fairphone 2". Doesn't that defeat the purpose of this?
pingswept 10y ago
Here's the best current attempt at what you're imagining: https://www.crowdsupply.com/eoma68/micro-desktop https://www.crowdsupply.com/eoma68/micro-desktop
FussyZeus 10y ago
You say this as if there isn't a widespread base of consumers who don't want to tinker, don't want to upgrade and don't want to assemble and the only problem is manufacturers don't want to make modular phones. Frankly a modular phone sounds godawful. I work all week and build stuff in my spare time, I don't want yet another thing I need to maintain and that's why I have an iPhone. There's no reason we can't have proper disposal methods and environmentally sound manufacturing -AND- have single-piece prebuilt devices. I'd argue that making stuff modular wouldn't even solve that problem in the first place, you'd just have piles and piles of PIECES of phones instead of piles and piles of phones.
- TeMPOraL 10y ago
  > I'd argue that making stuff modular wouldn't even solve that problem in the first place, you'd just have piles and piles of PIECES of phones instead of piles and piles of phones. Presumably, with better parts standardization, you'd have companies buying off broken phones and reassembling the still working components into new phones. Sort of what happens in Shenzhen, but on a larger scale.
jasonkostempski 10y ago
"not feasible due to lack of profit" Is that really true or is it just that they can make more doing it the way they are? I'd love to see a big company that boast about the money they're not making because they have standards they're not willing to give up on.
leejoramo 10y ago
The waste I see in these photos is not one-piece phones or laptops. They are the components of desktops. In theory most of these cases, power supplies, mother boards and cables could be reused.
- darod 10y ago
  these are computers from at least 15 years ago. wait a few more when people start throwing out the "hand me down" phones.
stickfigure 10y ago
I want to have the components as modules that is easy to switch or upgrade. This was standard for computers back in the 80s and 90s and has become less popular over time. The problem is twofold: 1) all components tend to become obsolete at the same time and 2) the bus itself becomes obsolete. So even the most modular computers - which cost more, were physically larger, and contained more e-waste - tended to get replaced wholesale anyway. Computer upgradability is a myth.
medius 10y ago
Repairing is one part, but the software "upgrades" are also responsible for this. I have a 3-4 years old iPad. It's in perfect condition. No hardware problems at all and very minimal scratches. I take good care of it. But Apple keeps forcing me to update iOS to newer and newer versions. Also, the apps stop supporting the older OS. But upgrading it causes it to slow down. New iOS and app version seems to be bloated more and more. Even simple web-browsing is slow which used to be fine before the updates. I'm sticking to it for now, but it's slowly getting unusable and might end up in e-waste before its time.
yekim 10y ago
Thanks for posting re: the fairphone. Never heard of that before. Got any personal first hand experience with it?

gravypod 10y ago

I wish there was a way to sign up and say "I'll take your crap" for everything electronic. I just pick stuff up when I find it but it's pretty hard. If people could just say "I'm throwing out a powersupply" I'd head over and pick it up. Just pulling caps out of that and selling them at hamfests could make you some nice pocket change.

vwcx 10y ago
In certain large US cities, posting on Freecycle and Craigslist have gotten people to my apartment to pick up free things within a few hours.
cdubzzz 10y ago
So you've got the caps taken care of. What about the remaining parts of the power supply? Say you do sign up and get 1,000 power supplies. What do you do with them?
- gravypod 10y ago
  Sell them for parts, sell them as working-refurbished, or build bench-top power supplies with them and sell those to hobbyists on the cheap? Also I don't need to take all of them and I'm surely not the only one interested. If 500 people take and use 2, that's all of the 1k saved.
dspillett 10y ago
I'd love to do that from the other side, and I've tried via freecycle, local facebook for sale or free groups, and so forth, but people are just irritating to deal with especially when you are giving things away for free: * They don't turn up when they say they will and don't bother to let you know that they can't make it * Arranging a time in the first place is a faf (they'll say they can collect any time, then reject the first few times you suggest * If I list things as "available to collect at <these times>" or "I can deliver by cycle to <this range of locations> at <these times>" the first few responses are are people asking if they can collect at a completely different time or if I can deliver to somewhere many miles further away * When you are having a clear out and getting rid of a lot of stuff and say "preference given to someone who wants to take it all in one go" (to save arranging several collections/drop-offs, without fail I get someone who says they want it all but when they turn up (or I travel out to drop-off) they've "changed their mind" and "can I just take <one specific item>?" * People ask questions that are already answered and get offended when you respond with "please read the original advert" or similar. * When you've updated the listing to indicate that the items are gone, for days I sometimes keep getting "do you still have this? Can I have it?" messages. And so on. As much as I hate sending things to landfill after the last few time I've tried to give spare parts or anything else away I've decided not to put up with the hassle in future, I just don't have the time to deal with people. > Just pulling caps out of that and selling them at hamfests could make you some nice pocket change. Would you really have the time to do that at enough scale to make it worth while (it would be quite a different matter to scavenging parts for your own projects) and nothing else you'd rather be doing with that time? Do you have enough space to store parts waiting to be processed? And a way to get rid of the unsalvageable left-overs (in many areas you'll need an appropriate commercial waste license, or should pay someone who has, as soon as you are disposing of anything beyond normal personal waste)?

gshakir 10y ago

The manufacturers should add in the cost of recycling and also process recycling themselves as part of the product lifecycle. Not an easy thing to implement.

adrianN 10y ago
Shipping to third world countries and letting the local "recycling" companies handle the dirty work is the way these regulations are currently complied with.

nsxwolf 10y ago

These pictures don't do anything to indicate the scale of the problem. I could probably fit all of that junk in my house (from floor to ceiling) How about some comparisons? Would the total pile of e-waste be Mt. Everest size, etc?

danso 10y ago
My thought exactly. I know that in a photo essay of things like a massive California wildfire, it's important to include people-level shots, but unless I'm missing a Next Page button, all of these photos are taken at such a limited perspective that they could originate from any small town municipal dump. When I read the headline, I expected to see mountains and mountains of e-waste, with the affected residents looking like mere ants among the heaps.

runeb 10y ago

Chrome will not let me visit theguardian.com due to broken HTTPS (net::ERR_CERT_REVOKED)[1]. Anyone else seeing this? [1] http://imgur.com/a/i3bvo http://imgur.com/a/i3bvo

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
davidcollantes 10y ago
I am seeing it. I can't see the images on Safari either, they show broken. It is saying the certificate was revoked.
manwithaplan 10y ago
Works fine here. The certificate I’m getting (‎49 f4 d4 f3 ca df 0a 4a 5a 54 f4 90) is issued to i.ssl.fastly.net and has 152 other alternative names, including DNS Name=theguardian.com DNS Name=*.theguardian.com
pi-rat 10y ago
Same problem, and I've been having the same issue with other sites. It's the after effects of Global Signs major screw up a couple of days ago [1]. They managed to revoke one of their own cross-signing certificates by mistake. We'll be seeing problems like this for a few more days until cache clears. [1] https://downloads.globalsign.com/acton/fs/blocks/showLandingPage/a/2674/p/p-008f/t/page/fm/0 https://downloads.globalsign.com/acton/fs/blocks/showLanding...

grownseed 10y ago

Perhaps we could start by penalizing companies like HP that actively participate to this waste by producing stuff like their shitty disposable printers (where buying new cartridges can cost more than buying a whole new printer). Likewise, we could also penalize phone providers who keep pushing new phones on people for absolutely no good reason (other than to line their pockets). Or maybe, and I know this is some kind of wild idea, we could require manufacturers to make interoperable parts that can actually be changed and switched between devices, regardless of brand. I don't know...

knightofmars 10y ago

http://thegeekchurch.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/Futurama-clip.png http://thegeekchurch.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/Futurama...

snake_plissken 10y ago

What's the feasibility of something like an arc furnace mixed with a fractal distillation tower mixed with a co-generation facility? You could throw all of the e-junk inside. The arc furnace would melt everything down, the metals would be separated via density differences, and then you use the excess heat to generate steam. For the plastics and PCB boards, which I imagine would all turn to gaseous forms, you could route the gas somewhere and precipitate out the various components.

1123335644546 10y ago
Wow!

endswapper 10y ago

First, e-waste is not a "problem" it is a reality. Second, electronics manufacturers create, operate and pay for sophisticated e-waste recycling programs. These programs are built in to their business models and they are not externalized. Processes depend on the waste stream, but generally speaking waste is collected, disassembled, processed and separated then processed again in to raw materials. The program includes audits that ensure the materials go in to new products or raw materials rather than being landfilled. E-waste is a resource that deserves proper stewardship.