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Apple themselves claims that roughly 80% of the emissions of an iPhone comes from production; with the remainder being transit, use, and end of life recycling.
by ashtonkem 5y ago
Apple themselves claims that roughly 80% of the emissions of an iPhone comes from production; with the remainder being transit, use, and end of life recycling. As far as electronics are concerned, the best thing you can do is defer upgrading as long as possible.
Interestingly enough, the same is true for cars. It’s often better to just keep using an older car until it dies from a CO2 perspective (sometimes older cars emit other pollutants that makes this more complicated). Depending on the exact mix of electricity production in your area, it can sometimes be greener to use a used gasoline car than a new EV, although that is changing as energy production shifts towards renewable sources.
- maccard 5y agoAgree eith everything you've said, but with one caveat - the resale market for cars and consumer electronics is completely different. Everyone I know has a drawer full of old laptops/chargers/phones that were purchased new and are only destined for landfill. Meanwhile, cars get reused long after their first owner gets rid of them even if they replace them every two years.
- ashtonkem 5y agoIt’s certainly much easier to keep a used car running for a decade than it is to keep a used phone running, that’s for sure. And there’s a market specifically designed to support that too. I think the most realistic choice here is to not upgrade phones every 1-2 years, but stretch it to 3. The recent trend of Apple to not include all the accessories in the box is probably a net good, given how many chargers almost consumers have already too.
- nicoburns 5y ago4 is definitely doable. More if you're in the apple ecosystem. iOS 15 (not yet releases) still supports the iPhone 6s which was originally released in 2015. I bought one last year as a testing device for work, and it's still a great phone (and much cheaper - £120 and had recently had it's battery replaced). On the android side you have to be more lucky, but my Samsung S7 (releases 2017) is still going strong and recieved a security update last month.
- flaratt_ljos 5y agoI'm still using the iPhone 6s that I bought in 2015, and it's practically as good as new. It's still using the original battery, which doesn't seem to hold charge for as long anymore, but even so, it's doing remarkably well.
- imperistan 5y agoI use a iPhone 5s. Works fine and I have no reason to upgrade at all. I think I have it for like five years now. I did get the battery replaced last year though
- pkdpic_y9k 5y agoI just regrettably got rid of my iphone 5S this year. God I miss that eighth inch jack... Why did I get rid of it again?
- icelandicmoss 5y agoMy Nokia 6500 is starting to get a bit flaky, but it's done a good 12 years or so... (It's hard to find a better phone with the same form factor.) I get very attached to my devices, not sure I could deal with a 2-3 year turnover.
- walshemj 5y agomy motog lasted 6-7 years just replaced it with the latest G9
- unhammer 5y agoIt's sad that 3 is considered a stretch. In Norway, you actually have 5 years of "reklamasjonsrett" (right to get it repaired or replaced if there's some fault the producer should have known about). And Samsung gives security updates for 4 years these days, so you don't even need to run unofficial Androids for the first four years (though really there should be some law about providing security updates, cf. the recent mybook incident and Internet of unpatched Things)
- esyir 5y agoI wish this was the case for gpus now though. They've actually appreciated.
- jonas21 5y agoIt's kind of hard to keep a drawer full of old cars in your house.
- ppf 5y agoCould not agree more. If you halved the rate at which you replaced electronics (TV, laptop, phone, etc), you would probably do more good towards reducing CO2 production than buying an EV.