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There's a notable lack of refurbishment/recycling businesses in western Europe. The UK is leading here, the Netherlands is also decent, but Germany, France, Bel

by bserge 6y ago

There's a notable lack of refurbishment/recycling businesses in western Europe. The UK is leading here, the Netherlands is also decent, but Germany, France, Belgium are surprisingly behind. Sure, there's quite a few small outfits that do it, but very few companies doing it at scale. I'm looking at possibly opening such a factory somewhere between FR/DE/BE, though it would ideally need some investment to get it up and running fast. We need to get rid of this stigma of buying used/refurbished. Nothing wrong with an older appliance that has been fixed, tested and cleaned properly. And the environment benefits.

ciupicri 6y ago
Nothing wrong with an older appliance, except that you get what you pay. It might be too power hungry or hot, it might be unsupported/obsolete [1][2] or too slow, e.g. Core 2 Duo can barely play FullHD YouTube videos; AV1 and H265 are also too slow on the first generations of Core CPUs (i5-520M, i3-2120). For these reasons I've recently avoided buying anything before Haswell - the first generation with AVX-2 instructions. I would have preferred Broadwell or Skylake because of the new Intel graphics Linux driver [3], but they were too expensive. [1]: "Intel drops plans to develop Spectre microcode for ancient chips", https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/04/intel-drops-plans-to-develop-spectre-microcode-for-ancient-chips/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/04/intel-drops-plans-to... [2]: "Support timeframes for Unix legacy GPU releases", https://nvidia.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/3142/~/support-timeframes-for-unix-legacy-gpu-releases https://nvidia.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/3142/~/s... [3]: https://github.com/intel/media-driver https://github.com/intel/media-driver
- simion314 6y ago
  Sure, my first computer was a 486 at the time my friends had Pentium2 . Nothing wrong with a poor kid getting a slower computer and this computer had to wait a few more years before was thrown to garbage (I passed it to a cousin when I had more money to get something more powerful that could play mp3s )
- bserge 6y ago
  Core 2 Duo is ancient. But people are tossing 2-4 year old machines, and they've got everything one needs. Not to mention smartphones and tablets, which get old in 6 months. That's ridiculous. It's even worse with home appliances, which do not have any significant improvements yoy, or indeed, any improvements at all. Nothing but the design changes. They can be easily fixed and will last just as long as a new appliance.
  - znpy 6y ago
    > But people are tossing 2-4 year old machines This! Think of companies that replace their laptops every 3-5 years. A five years old laptop is still fully functional (believe me, I run a 2014-2015 ThinkPad T440 as a personal machine and it works fine). A three years old laptop... Even better.
  - ciupicri 6y ago
    Core 2 Duo is indeed ancient, but it's still being sold.
bonoboTP 6y ago
People are too rich to care in Western Europe. Perhaps if you sell it with some environmental marketing and get Greta onboard as mascot or something, then it could become trendy to buy used, like minimalism and zero waste. But it's still a subculture niche. You could also rely on poor people (immigrants, students etc) as customers, but there's not much profit to be made based on poor people.
- bserge 6y ago
  I doubt it, the used electronics/appliances market in the UK is huge. And other EU countries import refurbished products from the UK, as well. I worked for a big recycling company, there's no shortage of suppliers and customers, even though Brexit scared away a lot of them, they simply have no alternative closer to home. Selling the parts out of appliances/electronics is just as profitable, by the way. And there's a big market for them in the EU, thanks to the many small repair shops. One washing machine can either be sold as a refurb, or stripped down for parts for about the same resale cost. Same for laptops, desktops of course, and even smartphones. Eastern Europe is a good market, along with western Europe, but only the latter is a good location for a recycling/reuse factory, as it's got the largest number of possible suppliers.
schrijver 6y ago
In Belgium I’ve heard of quite some people using the website https://www.backmarket.be/ https://www.backmarket.be/ (I think it’s a French company) — if you look into how they work, they resell the output of a lot of smaller refurbishing outfits. Finding a way to scale up the refurbishing process would be great, if you go through with your plan I’m rooting for you!

by bserge 6y ago

ciupicri 6y ago

Nothing wrong with an older appliance, except that you get what you pay. It might be too power hungry or hot, it might be unsupported/obsolete [1][2] or too slow, e.g. Core 2 Duo can barely play FullHD YouTube videos; AV1 and H265 are also too slow on the first generations of Core CPUs (i5-520M, i3-2120). For these reasons I've recently avoided buying anything before Haswell - the first generation with AVX-2 instructions. I would have preferred Broadwell or Skylake because of the new Intel graphics Linux driver [3], but they were too expensive. [1]: "Intel drops plans to develop Spectre microcode for ancient chips", https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/04/intel-drops-plans-to-develop-spectre-microcode-for-ancient-chips/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/04/intel-drops-plans-to... [2]: "Support timeframes for Unix legacy GPU releases", https://nvidia.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/3142/~/support-timeframes-for-unix-legacy-gpu-releases https://nvidia.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/3142/~/s... [3]: https://github.com/intel/media-driver https://github.com/intel/media-driver

simion314 6y ago
Sure, my first computer was a 486 at the time my friends had Pentium2 . Nothing wrong with a poor kid getting a slower computer and this computer had to wait a few more years before was thrown to garbage (I passed it to a cousin when I had more money to get something more powerful that could play mp3s )
bserge 6y ago
Core 2 Duo is ancient. But people are tossing 2-4 year old machines, and they've got everything one needs. Not to mention smartphones and tablets, which get old in 6 months. That's ridiculous. It's even worse with home appliances, which do not have any significant improvements yoy, or indeed, any improvements at all. Nothing but the design changes. They can be easily fixed and will last just as long as a new appliance.
- znpy 6y ago
  > But people are tossing 2-4 year old machines This! Think of companies that replace their laptops every 3-5 years. A five years old laptop is still fully functional (believe me, I run a 2014-2015 ThinkPad T440 as a personal machine and it works fine). A three years old laptop... Even better.
- ciupicri 6y ago
  Core 2 Duo is indeed ancient, but it's still being sold.

bonoboTP 6y ago

People are too rich to care in Western Europe. Perhaps if you sell it with some environmental marketing and get Greta onboard as mascot or something, then it could become trendy to buy used, like minimalism and zero waste. But it's still a subculture niche. You could also rely on poor people (immigrants, students etc) as customers, but there's not much profit to be made based on poor people.

bserge 6y ago
I doubt it, the used electronics/appliances market in the UK is huge. And other EU countries import refurbished products from the UK, as well. I worked for a big recycling company, there's no shortage of suppliers and customers, even though Brexit scared away a lot of them, they simply have no alternative closer to home. Selling the parts out of appliances/electronics is just as profitable, by the way. And there's a big market for them in the EU, thanks to the many small repair shops. One washing machine can either be sold as a refurb, or stripped down for parts for about the same resale cost. Same for laptops, desktops of course, and even smartphones. Eastern Europe is a good market, along with western Europe, but only the latter is a good location for a recycling/reuse factory, as it's got the largest number of possible suppliers.

schrijver 6y ago

In Belgium I’ve heard of quite some people using the website https://www.backmarket.be/ https://www.backmarket.be/ (I think it’s a French company) — if you look into how they work, they resell the output of a lot of smaller refurbishing outfits. Finding a way to scale up the refurbishing process would be great, if you go through with your plan I’m rooting for you!