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I would add to the list that it is environmentally negligent to allow for such a complex device to be near irreparable (specifically on battery replacement). U

I would add to the list that it is environmentally negligent to allow for such a complex device to be near irreparable (specifically on battery replacement). Unless you are selling medical devices your electronics should never be thrown away because after-sales cannot swap a battery. Then again Google just dropped the Pixel 3 after just 3 years so this is clearly an issue with the consumer electronics business model. Consumer electronics will remain a vastly wasteful business unless governments force tighter environmental regulations.

fsflover 5y ago
Related link: http://www.ibtimes.com/apple-airpods-repair-recycling-impossible-deemed-future-e-waste-ifixit-2465348 http://www.ibtimes.com/apple-airpods-repair-recycling-imposs....
- mckeed 5y ago
  At least Apple pays to recycle them, which is more than most companies making devices like this would do https://onezero.medium.com/what-really-happens-to-airpods-when-they-die-9ba2fe97b346 https://onezero.medium.com/what-really-happens-to-airpods-wh...
323 5y ago
How many people do you see using 2010 smartphones with replaceable batteries? Or put another way: people throw away phones after 3-4 years regardless of if you can replace the battery or not. You can pretty cheaply replace the battery in any phone at a repair shop. But people don't want that, they want the new phone with new look and new features.
- DoingIsLearning 5y ago
  > How many people do you see using 2010 smartphones with replaceable batteries? How many 2010 smartphones have security updates that you can safely use? It's a chicken and egg problem. For every person that chases the shinny new thing there are plenty of people who don't care about that and just want to have minimal functions, phone, sms, video chat, some decent photos/video, and occasional online banking. However due a broken business model from Tech giants and firmware lock-in from Mobile SoC manufacturers this is unattainable at the moment. Vendors should be forced to maintain an LTS work stream to give the alternative to those costumers who do want to act sustainably. Unfortunately that will never happen unless they are forced by regulatory changes.
  - 323 5y ago
    For the last 6 years, the average number of new smartphones sold per year was 1.5 billion. There are 6.5 billion people with smartphones in the world. So that's at most a 4 year churn rate. https://www.statista.com/statistics/263437/global-smartphone-sales-to-end-users-since-2007/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/263437/global-smartphone... https://www.bankmycell.com/blog/how-many-phones-are-in-the-world https://www.bankmycell.com/blog/how-many-phones-are-in-the-w...
    - danShumway 5y ago
      Aren't you kind of reinforcing GP's point? Either your research is showing that people on average keep their phones longer than 4 years, which seems to line up well with the argument that they don't throw out their phones every 3-4 years for the best new features for no reason; Or your research is showing that they do churn through at a 4 year rate, which seems to roughly line up with the average battery lifespan and security lifespan across the market. 3 years is right about the time period where I need to replace my phone battery. It would not surprise me at all to see stats that suggest that a lot of people keep their phones until the batteries are unusable or until they're no longer getting updates, and then swap to a new phone -- and across multiple manufacturers, I would not be surprised at all to see that work out to be a ~4 year churn rate, if not a little higher. I'm not sure what this proves. Anecdotally, I know more than a few people who prefer Apple devices specifically because of their longevity and support lifespan, so I don't think that the "we have to throw this out because a new phone got announced" characterization is universally true or even necessarily the most common consumer attitude. I also know people who have bought new phones because the battery was getting weak. I have argued with them to take their phones to a repair shop and to pay $60 to replace the battery, but they felt weird doing that for whatever reason. I suspect some of that might come from the fear of having their phone broken during the repair process before a new one comes in, but that's pure speculation on my part. And yeah, I also know a few people who have bought new phones just because they care about getting a slightly fancier camera. But I don't necessarily think they're the majority, and an average churn-rate of 4 years across the market would seem to reinforce that point more than anything else.
- InitialLastName 5y ago
  How many 2010 smartphones are still getting security updates, or updates that let them work with modern network standards? LTE was only barely available in 2010, and 3G is almost gone now.
  - 323 5y ago
    LTE/5G is a hardware thing, you can't add it with a software update. Yet another point that it's not the sealed battery which is the problem.
    - InitialLastName 5y ago
      You can't add it with a software update, but you could provide a modular phy (or continue support for older standards).
      - 323 5y ago
        Not talking about you since I don't know, but a funny thing I noticed, is that people who are very loud about saving the environment are always the ones with the latest iPhone 13 Max/Macbook Pro M1 in their hands one week after it's released.
        DoingIsLearning 5y ago
        Notice that you just went from "people don't really want it", to "it's not really feasible", all the way to straight up ad hominem.
        323 5y ago
        It was a side point, because it's always very rich people with iPhone 13 Max which are like "poor people should use 10 year old phones, but not me, I can't be seen on gram with that, I need credibility so I can speak out about the climate" Modular phones were tried and were a complete market failure. Because they sacrifice thinness, robustness and water proofing. Older standards are removed because they are not used anymore, so the bandwidth is freed for newer ones. And "people don't really want it" remains just as true. Just like people didn't want small screens, until even Apple famously yielded.
- GuB-42 5y ago
  In 2010, smartphones were just taking off, every new generation offered significant improvement. 2010 smartphones are terrible by today's standards: small storage, underpowered, no 4G, bad camera, etc... 2015 smartphones are a different story. Things have stabilized, and a good 2015 smartphone should be perfectly usable today, a bit sluggish, but usable. And interestingly, that's when they stopped having user replaceable batteries. More generally, the market shifted from real obsolescence to planned obsolescence.
soared 5y ago
Airpods are insanely small and the outside casing is pretty much a single piece of plastic. I am all for right to repair, but it does not seem feasible or reasonable for AirPods - they’d have to be bulkier.
- Gigachad 5y ago
  The airpods in entirety would be less waste than the packaging most spare parts come wrapped in. It just feels worse because they cost a lot more than a plastic foam pack your steak comes in.
- delecti 5y ago
  > they’d have to be bulkier Then make them bulkier. What's worse, filling the planet with garbage, or a few industrial designers having slightly less impressive portfolios?
  - ChicagoBoy11 5y ago
    That's entirely fair, but the issue is the demand for the less bulky bluetooth headset isn't there. To think that this will be solved from the supply-side is wishful thinking at best; if folks really demanded repairable headsets, the supply would take care of itself.
    - DoingIsLearning 5y ago
      I mean there was no demand for more expensive unleaded fuel but we still regulated leaded fuel out of existence. What consumers want and what is needed for the environment is not always aligned. Consumer demand is not a very good guiding principle for environmental protection.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
  - Gigachad 5y ago
    It's actually pretty bad for the airpods. The gen 3 airpods are bulkier than the 1 and 2 which now means they don't stay in my ears nearly as well. I never had issues with the originals falling out which I now do with the gen 3.
yepthatsreality 5y ago
Apple consumers don’t care about the environment, that’s why they buy products that need to be replaced yearly by choice or by design. So these arguments are lost on them.
kristjansson 5y ago
Just as a gentle counterpoint, consider the magnitude of the problem. Let's say there are 300m AirPod units that have been produced (60m sales per year for the last 5 years). Each unit is about 2oz, mostly plastic and batteries. That's roughly 20,000 tons. Los Angeles County alone (to pick a place) generates about 100,000 tons of solid waste per _day_, of which about 20,000 tons makes it to landfill[0][1]. If they were all thrown away at once, all in Los Angeles, they'd hardly notice. Semiconductors and consumer electronics are more environmentally sensitive than they were, and can be better than they are. With the lithium and trace metals, AirPods are more damaging pound for pound than bulk waste, and you're right to insist that Apple do a better supporting recycle and recapture. We should also focus on how those materials are mined in the first place. However, even a repairable AirPod would generate lithium waste as the batteries wear out. If we're going to have consumer electronics, there's going to be a bit of waste. Let's just keep in mind that real problems are coal and SUVs and beef and so on. A business like AirPods (or all of electronics) that generates fractional ounces (or pounds considering everything) of waste per person-year while enabling environmentally-positive changes like remote work is perhaps not the first target for reprobation. [0]: https://dpw.lacounty.gov/epd/swims/OnlineServices/reports.aspx https://dpw.lacounty.gov/epd/swims/OnlineServices/reports.as... [1]: https://www.laalmanac.com/environment/ev04.php https://www.laalmanac.com/environment/ev04.php
- DoingIsLearning 5y ago
  Wholly agree that transportation and energy usage of coal/natural gas should be our primary target.

fsflover 5y ago

Related link: http://www.ibtimes.com/apple-airpods-repair-recycling-impossible-deemed-future-e-waste-ifixit-2465348 http://www.ibtimes.com/apple-airpods-repair-recycling-imposs....

mckeed 5y ago
At least Apple pays to recycle them, which is more than most companies making devices like this would do https://onezero.medium.com/what-really-happens-to-airpods-when-they-die-9ba2fe97b346 https://onezero.medium.com/what-really-happens-to-airpods-wh...

323 5y ago

How many people do you see using 2010 smartphones with replaceable batteries? Or put another way: people throw away phones after 3-4 years regardless of if you can replace the battery or not. You can pretty cheaply replace the battery in any phone at a repair shop. But people don't want that, they want the new phone with new look and new features.

DoingIsLearning 5y ago
> How many people do you see using 2010 smartphones with replaceable batteries? How many 2010 smartphones have security updates that you can safely use? It's a chicken and egg problem. For every person that chases the shinny new thing there are plenty of people who don't care about that and just want to have minimal functions, phone, sms, video chat, some decent photos/video, and occasional online banking. However due a broken business model from Tech giants and firmware lock-in from Mobile SoC manufacturers this is unattainable at the moment. Vendors should be forced to maintain an LTS work stream to give the alternative to those costumers who do want to act sustainably. Unfortunately that will never happen unless they are forced by regulatory changes.
- 323 5y ago
  For the last 6 years, the average number of new smartphones sold per year was 1.5 billion. There are 6.5 billion people with smartphones in the world. So that's at most a 4 year churn rate. https://www.statista.com/statistics/263437/global-smartphone-sales-to-end-users-since-2007/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/263437/global-smartphone... https://www.bankmycell.com/blog/how-many-phones-are-in-the-world https://www.bankmycell.com/blog/how-many-phones-are-in-the-w...
  - danShumway 5y ago
    Aren't you kind of reinforcing GP's point? Either your research is showing that people on average keep their phones longer than 4 years, which seems to line up well with the argument that they don't throw out their phones every 3-4 years for the best new features for no reason; Or your research is showing that they do churn through at a 4 year rate, which seems to roughly line up with the average battery lifespan and security lifespan across the market. 3 years is right about the time period where I need to replace my phone battery. It would not surprise me at all to see stats that suggest that a lot of people keep their phones until the batteries are unusable or until they're no longer getting updates, and then swap to a new phone -- and across multiple manufacturers, I would not be surprised at all to see that work out to be a ~4 year churn rate, if not a little higher. I'm not sure what this proves. Anecdotally, I know more than a few people who prefer Apple devices specifically because of their longevity and support lifespan, so I don't think that the "we have to throw this out because a new phone got announced" characterization is universally true or even necessarily the most common consumer attitude. I also know people who have bought new phones because the battery was getting weak. I have argued with them to take their phones to a repair shop and to pay $60 to replace the battery, but they felt weird doing that for whatever reason. I suspect some of that might come from the fear of having their phone broken during the repair process before a new one comes in, but that's pure speculation on my part. And yeah, I also know a few people who have bought new phones just because they care about getting a slightly fancier camera. But I don't necessarily think they're the majority, and an average churn-rate of 4 years across the market would seem to reinforce that point more than anything else.
InitialLastName 5y ago
How many 2010 smartphones are still getting security updates, or updates that let them work with modern network standards? LTE was only barely available in 2010, and 3G is almost gone now.
- 323 5y ago
  LTE/5G is a hardware thing, you can't add it with a software update. Yet another point that it's not the sealed battery which is the problem.
  - InitialLastName 5y ago
    You can't add it with a software update, but you could provide a modular phy (or continue support for older standards).
    - 323 5y ago
      Not talking about you since I don't know, but a funny thing I noticed, is that people who are very loud about saving the environment are always the ones with the latest iPhone 13 Max/Macbook Pro M1 in their hands one week after it's released.
      - DoingIsLearning 5y ago
        Notice that you just went from "people don't really want it", to "it's not really feasible", all the way to straight up ad hominem.
        323 5y ago
        It was a side point, because it's always very rich people with iPhone 13 Max which are like "poor people should use 10 year old phones, but not me, I can't be seen on gram with that, I need credibility so I can speak out about the climate" Modular phones were tried and were a complete market failure. Because they sacrifice thinness, robustness and water proofing. Older standards are removed because they are not used anymore, so the bandwidth is freed for newer ones. And "people don't really want it" remains just as true. Just like people didn't want small screens, until even Apple famously yielded.
GuB-42 5y ago
In 2010, smartphones were just taking off, every new generation offered significant improvement. 2010 smartphones are terrible by today's standards: small storage, underpowered, no 4G, bad camera, etc... 2015 smartphones are a different story. Things have stabilized, and a good 2015 smartphone should be perfectly usable today, a bit sluggish, but usable. And interestingly, that's when they stopped having user replaceable batteries. More generally, the market shifted from real obsolescence to planned obsolescence.

soared 5y ago

Airpods are insanely small and the outside casing is pretty much a single piece of plastic. I am all for right to repair, but it does not seem feasible or reasonable for AirPods - they’d have to be bulkier.

Gigachad 5y ago
The airpods in entirety would be less waste than the packaging most spare parts come wrapped in. It just feels worse because they cost a lot more than a plastic foam pack your steak comes in.
delecti 5y ago
> they’d have to be bulkier Then make them bulkier. What's worse, filling the planet with garbage, or a few industrial designers having slightly less impressive portfolios?
- ChicagoBoy11 5y ago
  That's entirely fair, but the issue is the demand for the less bulky bluetooth headset isn't there. To think that this will be solved from the supply-side is wishful thinking at best; if folks really demanded repairable headsets, the supply would take care of itself.
  - DoingIsLearning 5y ago
    I mean there was no demand for more expensive unleaded fuel but we still regulated leaded fuel out of existence. What consumers want and what is needed for the environment is not always aligned. Consumer demand is not a very good guiding principle for environmental protection.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
- Gigachad 5y ago
  It's actually pretty bad for the airpods. The gen 3 airpods are bulkier than the 1 and 2 which now means they don't stay in my ears nearly as well. I never had issues with the originals falling out which I now do with the gen 3.

yepthatsreality 5y ago

Apple consumers don’t care about the environment, that’s why they buy products that need to be replaced yearly by choice or by design. So these arguments are lost on them.

kristjansson 5y ago

Just as a gentle counterpoint, consider the magnitude of the problem. Let's say there are 300m AirPod units that have been produced (60m sales per year for the last 5 years). Each unit is about 2oz, mostly plastic and batteries. That's roughly 20,000 tons. Los Angeles County alone (to pick a place) generates about 100,000 tons of solid waste per _day_, of which about 20,000 tons makes it to landfill[0][1]. If they were all thrown away at once, all in Los Angeles, they'd hardly notice. Semiconductors and consumer electronics are more environmentally sensitive than they were, and can be better than they are. With the lithium and trace metals, AirPods are more damaging pound for pound than bulk waste, and you're right to insist that Apple do a better supporting recycle and recapture. We should also focus on how those materials are mined in the first place. However, even a repairable AirPod would generate lithium waste as the batteries wear out. If we're going to have consumer electronics, there's going to be a bit of waste. Let's just keep in mind that real problems are coal and SUVs and beef and so on. A business like AirPods (or all of electronics) that generates fractional ounces (or pounds considering everything) of waste per person-year while enabling environmentally-positive changes like remote work is perhaps not the first target for reprobation. [0]: https://dpw.lacounty.gov/epd/swims/OnlineServices/reports.aspx https://dpw.lacounty.gov/epd/swims/OnlineServices/reports.as... [1]: https://www.laalmanac.com/environment/ev04.php https://www.laalmanac.com/environment/ev04.php

DoingIsLearning 5y ago
Wholly agree that transportation and energy usage of coal/natural gas should be our primary target.