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I hope at some point we'll start including recycling/disassembly and replacement externalities into price somehow. I don't know how you would do that in a fair
by stefco_ 9y ago
I hope at some point we'll start including recycling/disassembly and replacement externalities into price somehow. I don't know how you would do that in a fair way, but it is frustrating that there aren't a ton of corrective market forces to encourage manufacturers to make highly reusable, repairable, recyclable devices.
All of this electronics churn is environmentally terrible, and it's frustrating that, as with carbon energy products, the entire world is forced to pay for the environmental externalities rather than the actual tech users.
You can make an accelerationist argument about not discouraging tech development and dealing with the problems using more efficient tech in the future, I guess. But I'd honestly rather have electronics cost a bit more and know that manufacturers had a financial interest in maintaining rather than replacing.
- thechao 9y agoI always thought that a regulation along the lines of "if you sell it, you must give the customer the ability to dispose of it" would be nice. And, yes, I do think that means Amazon would have to have some sort of bricks-and-mortar operation: at minimum there must be a shop owned by someone, which Amazon has a deal with, that you'd be able to drop your discarded Amajunk off at. Also, I also think we should have a carbon recapture tax added to gasoline, but no one I know really wants to pay an additional tax of 7-10$/gallon.
- Someone 9y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extended_producer_responsibility https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extended_producer_responsibili..., which, in the EU, led to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restriction_of_Hazardous_Substances_Directive https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restriction_of_Hazardous_Subst... and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waste_Electrical_and_Electronic_Equipment_Directive https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waste_Electrical_and_Electroni..., which puts the responsibility on manufacturers, rather than sellers. That takes care of that Amazon problem. As always in the EU, the exact effect of these differs by country (EU directives describe goals, and leave the means to get there to member countries)
- 5555624 9y agoAmazon wouldn't need a brick-and-mortar operation. Just log into your account and print out a postpaid shipping label. They keep your purchase history; so, you could look up the order and click a link next to the item. There are far more Post Offices than any shops they could make a deal with.
- Teever 9y agoWait, does Amazon ship the junk back to China too and then China disassembles it and ships the elements back to their respective holes in the ground? It seems like a better idea would be to just have Amazon give you a voucher for the recycling fees in your local community.
- amichal 9y agoMost "Recycled" electronics are sent back to china at least in part Edit: summary at https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_waste_in_China https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_waste_in_China
- Teever 9y agoSure but it seems a little inefficient to send them individually is my point.
- icebraining 9y agoYou never ship them individually, you use containers. And it's probably quite efficient: the shipping boats have to return to China anyway to get more stuff.
- jdietrich 9y agoIt's basically free. There's far more stuff coming from China to the west than vice-versa. A ship can't travel empty, but needs to be ballasted with an appropriate weight of cargo. If there isn't enough booked cargo on the return leg to China, they'll make up the weight with scrap metal or rubble.
- dclowd9901 9y agoTax on gasoline like that would only affect the poorest of citizens. Charge it on shares of gasoline producing companies and car companies so their share holders scream at them to move to less carbon-y energy creation mechanisms.
- isolli 9y agoThere is a solution: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cap_and_dividend https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cap_and_dividend
- icebraining 9y agoThe end result would be the same, they would just pass the costs to the consumer.
- jdavis703 9y agoThe poorest citizens don't own cars.
- gjjrfcbugxbhf 9y agoIt does depend on where you live. In US they probably do. In EU countries they probably don't.
- thomastjeffery 9y agoBut they get their groceries from stores that deliver goods via trucks.
- walterstucco 9y agoActually they are the only one owning them because they need them They live outside the cities where housing is more affordable but there's no public transport
- icantdrive55 9y agoOh yes they do. They might have 240,000 miles on them, but poor people, like myself, have/need a vechicle. And poor people work on their own vechicles. If you do all the repairs on a vechicle, and don't have high insurance; driving a older vechicle is cost efficient, and a necessity for many poor people. I cringe when I hear about more gas taxes. Tax people on Income.
- thomastjeffery 9y ago> Also, I also think we should have a carbon recapture tax added to gasoline That can't work for any country that has "country". In the US, the vast majority of goods are delivered using trucks that burn diesel. You can't have a gas tax without a diesel tax. Everyone would just switch over. If you tax gas, you effectively tax everything, and that's not okay for any economy.
- vkou 9y ago> If you tax gas, you effectively tax everything, and that's not okay for any economy. Why? The purpose of the carbon tax is to capture the negative externality of carbon pollution, and to encourage more energy-efficient industries. Not all parts of the economy use equal amounts of energy, and we should encourage the energy-efficient ones. I burn carbon when I drive my car to work. I burn much less carbon when I take the bus to work. We want to encourage the latter - carbon taxes let the market do this encouragement. The alternative is doing so by government fiat.
- thomastjeffery 9y ago> I burn much less carbon when I take the bus to work. I understand that. It's the obvious reasoning behind a gas tax. My entire point is that there are also other effects. If gas prices raise significantly, then the price of everything - groceries, medication, clothing, cleaning supplies, solar panels, everything - raises, meaning simple things that everyone relies on suddenly become unaffordable to low-wage workers, so their employers suddenly need to raise profits to accommodate the price hike, and raise wages for the bulk of their employees, or (more likely) simply fail, resulting in a significant unemployment increase. You can't just magically fix climate change by putting the poor out of work, nor should you. > encourage more energy-efficient industries. This can be done with much more reasonable methods. Don't forget that transportation is not the only significant source of carbon emissions. The best legislative efforts we can make are to support clean energy (nuclear, wind, solar).
- logfromblammo 9y ago
- madeofpalk 9y agoThat already happens, but on a different scale. When Apple has to repair or replace an iPhone, they're giving you a remanufactured iPhone using reused internal parts like screws or shielding. This is factored into the costs of an iPhone which keeps them 'lower' / profit margins higher.
- alphaalpha101 9y agoUnfortunately, what ends up happening in most cases is that people make products, give them a ridiculous 1y or 2y warranty, then claim that if there're any problems after that time period you'll have to pay to repair or replace.
- oneplane 9y agoIn our country we have a law that states a product has to live up to it's reasonably expected life time. So while a manufacturer might give it a warranty and the retailer might give it some special warranty, ultimately, the retailer (which in some cases is the manufacturer if you buy directly) is responsible no matter what. That doesn't go for consumables or software, or if you break it yourself obviously, but a phone or computer for example is of course expected to work for at least 4 or 5 years or so. So if it breaks, you are entitled to support and/or repairs, which also has a limitation on any administrative fees that might apply. It pretty much applies to everything, from cars to washing machines to faucets to electric toothbrushes.
- matt_kantor 9y agoHow is "reasonably expected life time" defined?
- alphaalpha101 9y agoThe same way 'reasonable' is defined everywhere in the law: it's up to the interpretation of the court.
- JumpCrisscross 9y ago
- pjc50 9y agoThis is exactly what the EU WEEE directive is. It makes only a very small difference, although it did result in action against anti-refill ink cartridges.
- GuiA 9y ago> All of this electronics churn is environmentally terrible, and it's frustrating that, as with carbon energy products, the entire world is forced to pay for the environmental externalities rather than the actual tech users. Well, let’s see what a leading company is saying about that: ”We believe our goal should be a closed-loop supply chain, where products are built using only renewable resources or recycled material”[0] It’s not quite the cyberpunk dream of being able to repair anything with a soldering iron in 30 minutes, but it’s a very critical step to reach. We’re slowly getting there. [0]: https://images.apple.com/environment/pdf/Apple_Environmental_Responsibility_Report_2017.pdf https://images.apple.com/environment/pdf/Apple_Environmental... (page 16)
- occultist_throw 9y agoIt's not just cypherpunks and hardware hackers. We in the occult communities also very much believe in the same ideals. In fact, this saying is what this discussion reminded me of: Nidhogg's Rule: Recycling. There is no such place as Away, so be careful what you throw there. Recycle, give away, don't waste, find a place for it somewhere else. This includes people as well as things. http://www.northernpaganism.org/rokkatru/rokkatru-ethics.html http://www.northernpaganism.org/rokkatru/rokkatru-ethics.htm...
- TeMPOraL 9y agoYou mean, like, recycling people and giving them away? :o. (Also, nitpick, but cypherpunk != cyberpunk; the former won't care about repairability of the hardware, unless you put your private key on it.)
- Digit-Al 9y agoCan't you just chuck all your rubbish into Satan's bottomless pit of despair? ;-)
- dom0 9y agoCurrent policy overemphasizes recycling. Recycling is the last resort. First reduce or reuse, which are far superior. Throwing away would normally not even be a serious option, but this world's people are kinda brain damaged.
- nradov 9y agoJust require all manufacturers to charge a disposal deposit when selling any consumer electronics. Consumer gets the deposit back upon returning the device to an authorized center for disposal or recycling. A $15 deposit would probably give most people sufficient incentive to do the right thing.
- WillReplyfFood 9y agoPost-Moore, that argument of acceleratism is done for anyway.
- benevol 9y agoThe main issue is this: We need to reduce consumption overall! It is well known that Americans consume far more natural resources and live much less sustainably than people from any other large country of the world. “A child born in the United States will create thirteen times as much ecological damage over the course of his or her lifetime than a child born in Brazil,” reports the Sierra Club’s Dave Tilford, adding that the average American will drain as many resources as 35 natives of India and consume 53 times more goods and services than someone from China. Source: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/american-consumption-habits/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/american-consumpt...
- booblik 9y agoThis is a very bad extrapolation that doesn’t acount for the constant increase in consumption in those countries, whereas the US consumption leveled.
- benevol 9y agoI actually don't even want to compare numbers or countries directly. I just want to remind that consumption in Western countries exceeds available resources by far. We're bankrupting the planet, it's the wrong path and it simply can't last.
- occultist_throw 9y agoWell, yes and no. We've finally cracked the nut with renewable resources. Its cost a great deal of environmental damage, but I see no good progression to go from hunter-gatherer to high tech. That's just entropy laws. Now, it could certainly be argued that certain trajectories should be followed and aren't. But progress costs.
- wiz21c 9y agoIn Europe, any thing one buys must be guaranteed by the supplier for 2 years. If one could just push that up to, say, 4 years, it'd nice....
- pawelk 9y agoIn Poland, and I believe it's an EU regulation, every seller is obligated to take your old appliances when you buy new ones in the same category. For example when you buy a freezer you can drop your old one for recycling free of charge (so the cost is included in the retail price). Sometimes it's even used in marketing ("bring your old TV, get new one 10% cheaper"), maybe because they need to meet some quotas so they have to actively convince people to bring their old stuff. I'm not sure what happens with the items they collect, but hopefully it's shipped to some recycling center instead of getting dropped in a landfill, which would be the case when consumers didn't have this option.
- mrighele 9y ago> In Poland, and I believe it's an EU regulation, every seller is obligated to take your old appliances when you buy new ones in the same category. For example when you buy a freezer you can drop your old one for recycling free of charge (so the cost is included in the retail price). In Italy is the same. Keep in mind that the retail price includes a tax to cover the costs of recycling, so it is not really free :-). The amount depends on the type of appliance. This too should come from an EU directive.
- icc97 9y agoI think in Belgium they specify how much the recycling premium is when buying something new.
- chrisseaton 9y ago> Keep in mind that the retail price includes a tax to cover the costs of recycling, so it is not really free :-) They didn’t say they thought it was free. In fact they said > so the cost is included in the retail price And you quoted that!
- mrighele 9y agoOps ! You're right. Too little coffee I guess :-)
- 9y ago
- stefkors 9y agoIn the Netherlands there is a extra cost for certain products because of the pollution / disassembly costs. Its called the disposal fee, https://www.milieucentraal.nl/energie-besparen/apparaten-en-verlichting/huishoudelijke-apparaten/verwijderingsbijdrage/ https://www.milieucentraal.nl/energie-besparen/apparaten-en-...