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other things are bad -> bad thing isn’t bad? going on your estimate of 140g, 5 billion phones is 700,000 metric tonnes. that is an insane amount of waste, and

other things are bad -> bad thing isn’t bad? going on your estimate of 140g, 5 billion phones is 700,000 metric tonnes. that is an insane amount of waste, and not to be sniffed at besides this, phones are also massively more complex than a glass jar, and much more often replaced than a car or air conditioner there are genuine malevolent economic factors at play here. these companies want you to get a new phone and throw away your old one, so they can extract more wealth from you. and they have admitted to acting in ways that encourage this

Retric 4y ago
No, 700,000 metric tons per year globally is nothing and we aren’t manufacturing 5 billion phones a year so we aren’t throwing that many away per year. We have more waste from TV remote batteries and nobody singles them out. As to lifespan, in a lifetime I might have say 20 cellphones and 4 cars but that’s nowhere close to being equivalent waste or environmental impact.
- paulryanrogers 4y ago
  Doesn't it require like half a ton of material to produce one modern phone? (Including all the mining and manufacturing to get one from the earth to ones hand.) If so then 2.5 billion tons is worth some attention, in addition to other ecological challenges.
  - crazygringo 4y ago
    I can't find any data on anything like that. But quick googling reveals an iPhone contains 0.034 g of gold. Another stat says one ounce of gold requires 100,000 oz of ore, so the 0.034 g of gold would require 3.4 kg of ore. Nowhere even remotely close to half a ton. I can't find similar stats for e.g. palladium ore used to extract palladium, but remember that the amounts of precious metals in phones are truly tiny. The news reports I'm finding about "cell phones" and "tons" refer to water -- one report says 13 tons of water per phone. While a pair of leather boots is 25 tons of water, for comparison. But water is recyclable, and it doesn't seem like a concern particularly specific to electronics.
    - adhesive_wombat 4y ago
      "Tons of water" is also a pretty pointless metric used only because it sounds bad if you don't engage a crucial thought process. Tons of what kind of water (raw river water for cooling, or drinking water), and where (River, sea, lakes, aquifer, renewing source or not) and what happens to it (returned to the source, contaminated, evaporated, etc). Some places have so much water that they just let it run into the sea. Almost no water is "lost", except when growing food, when a small percentage of the water used is shipped away within the food.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- permo-w 4y ago
  it’s not nothing at all. it’s a lot, especially considering the complexity of the materials used. what’s in a battery? 3 or 4 different materials that we’re well set up to recycle? this isn’t the issue of where to dispose these phones, it’s the issue of where the materials are coming from in the first place, and how allowing unfettered market forces to roam free (the most blatant illustration being planned obsolescence) creates huge externalities, nicely encapsulated by the example of 5 billion phones being thrown out in a year
  - Retric 4y ago
    Only 1.75 billion phones where sold in 2020 and 17% of ewaste is recycled. Also batteries are a lot more complicated than you suggest. Just consider all the different chemicals used to create a logo on the side.
    - permo-w 4y ago
      they’re still significantly less complex and far more uniform than phones. this added to the fact that they’ve also been around longer means we’re much better set up to recycle them
      - Retric 4y ago
        Phones are vastly more likely to actually be recycled than AA batteries which mostly just get thrown away. The ideal model is actually car lead acid batteries which have very close to 100% recycling rate in the US. Granted people more often lose their phones than their cars but it still shows what’s possible.
- tomcam 4y ago
  I looked up “tv remote”. Apparently in the old days the tablet you used to watch videos was in some kind of large box with a glass screen, and the “TV remote” was the user interface for that box. Or something. Still trying to envision all of this ;)
gruez 4y ago
>going on your estimate of 140g, 5 billion phones is 700,000 metric tonnes. that is an insane amount of waste, and not to be sniffed at You can use this logic to justify just about anything, because 5 billion multiplied by anything is going to get a huge number.
- permo-w 4y ago
  yes, you’re right, 5 billion multiplied by most common numbers is going to be a huge number, and that is why this matters, not why it doesn’t
  - gruez 4y ago
    Except that the benefits (ie. 5 billion of whatever not being produced/thrown away) is only one side of the equation. The cost needs to be factored in as well, because fixing the problem of 5 billion phones isn't as easy as snapping your fingers. Just focusing on one side without considering the other makes for poor policy.
  - Tagbert 4y ago
    And if you are taking that 5B number as a given, then we will be completely out of phones in 3-5 years. That number is much larger than the number of phones produced in a year. It seems like the number taken from an arbitrary estimate scaled without reference to anything else. The estimates I have seen for number of new phones sold each year is around 1.5B. I would not expect more phones thrown away than are manufactured. https://www.zippia.com/advice/us-smartphone-industry-statistics/#:~:text=General%20U.S.%20Smartphone%20Industry%20Statistics%201%20Apple%20is,a%20compound%20annual%20growth%20rate%20of%2016.4%25.%20 https://www.zippia.com/advice/us-smartphone-industry-statist...

Retric 4y ago

No, 700,000 metric tons per year globally is nothing and we aren’t manufacturing 5 billion phones a year so we aren’t throwing that many away per year. We have more waste from TV remote batteries and nobody singles them out. As to lifespan, in a lifetime I might have say 20 cellphones and 4 cars but that’s nowhere close to being equivalent waste or environmental impact.

paulryanrogers 4y ago
Doesn't it require like half a ton of material to produce one modern phone? (Including all the mining and manufacturing to get one from the earth to ones hand.) If so then 2.5 billion tons is worth some attention, in addition to other ecological challenges.
- crazygringo 4y ago
  I can't find any data on anything like that. But quick googling reveals an iPhone contains 0.034 g of gold. Another stat says one ounce of gold requires 100,000 oz of ore, so the 0.034 g of gold would require 3.4 kg of ore. Nowhere even remotely close to half a ton. I can't find similar stats for e.g. palladium ore used to extract palladium, but remember that the amounts of precious metals in phones are truly tiny. The news reports I'm finding about "cell phones" and "tons" refer to water -- one report says 13 tons of water per phone. While a pair of leather boots is 25 tons of water, for comparison. But water is recyclable, and it doesn't seem like a concern particularly specific to electronics.
  - adhesive_wombat 4y ago
    "Tons of water" is also a pretty pointless metric used only because it sounds bad if you don't engage a crucial thought process. Tons of what kind of water (raw river water for cooling, or drinking water), and where (River, sea, lakes, aquifer, renewing source or not) and what happens to it (returned to the source, contaminated, evaporated, etc). Some places have so much water that they just let it run into the sea. Almost no water is "lost", except when growing food, when a small percentage of the water used is shipped away within the food.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
permo-w 4y ago
it’s not nothing at all. it’s a lot, especially considering the complexity of the materials used. what’s in a battery? 3 or 4 different materials that we’re well set up to recycle? this isn’t the issue of where to dispose these phones, it’s the issue of where the materials are coming from in the first place, and how allowing unfettered market forces to roam free (the most blatant illustration being planned obsolescence) creates huge externalities, nicely encapsulated by the example of 5 billion phones being thrown out in a year
- Retric 4y ago
  Only 1.75 billion phones where sold in 2020 and 17% of ewaste is recycled. Also batteries are a lot more complicated than you suggest. Just consider all the different chemicals used to create a logo on the side.
  - permo-w 4y ago
    they’re still significantly less complex and far more uniform than phones. this added to the fact that they’ve also been around longer means we’re much better set up to recycle them
    - Retric 4y ago
      Phones are vastly more likely to actually be recycled than AA batteries which mostly just get thrown away. The ideal model is actually car lead acid batteries which have very close to 100% recycling rate in the US. Granted people more often lose their phones than their cars but it still shows what’s possible.
tomcam 4y ago
I looked up “tv remote”. Apparently in the old days the tablet you used to watch videos was in some kind of large box with a glass screen, and the “TV remote” was the user interface for that box. Or something. Still trying to envision all of this ;)

gruez 4y ago

>going on your estimate of 140g, 5 billion phones is 700,000 metric tonnes. that is an insane amount of waste, and not to be sniffed at You can use this logic to justify just about anything, because 5 billion multiplied by anything is going to get a huge number.

permo-w 4y ago
yes, you’re right, 5 billion multiplied by most common numbers is going to be a huge number, and that is why this matters, not why it doesn’t
- gruez 4y ago
  Except that the benefits (ie. 5 billion of whatever not being produced/thrown away) is only one side of the equation. The cost needs to be factored in as well, because fixing the problem of 5 billion phones isn't as easy as snapping your fingers. Just focusing on one side without considering the other makes for poor policy.
- Tagbert 4y ago
  And if you are taking that 5B number as a given, then we will be completely out of phones in 3-5 years. That number is much larger than the number of phones produced in a year. It seems like the number taken from an arbitrary estimate scaled without reference to anything else. The estimates I have seen for number of new phones sold each year is around 1.5B. I would not expect more phones thrown away than are manufactured. https://www.zippia.com/advice/us-smartphone-industry-statistics/#:~:text=General%20U.S.%20Smartphone%20Industry%20Statistics%201%20Apple%20is,a%20compound%20annual%20growth%20rate%20of%2016.4%25.%20 https://www.zippia.com/advice/us-smartphone-industry-statist...