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One of the nasty impacts comes from the low-tech metal recovery process that washes out heavy metals like cadmium, mercury, lead, arsenic into the sea. Fish fro

One of the nasty impacts comes from the low-tech metal recovery process that washes out heavy metals like cadmium, mercury, lead, arsenic into the sea. Fish from the West coast of Africa are basically lethal to eat. Did a podcast with a researcher named Gerry McGovern (World Wide Waste) on this a couple of years ago [0]. Something that impedes recycling and repair is status display. I was proud of the old Nokia I kept for 10 years, all stuck together with tape, despite the scowls and snickers from the crowd with their latest iPhone who supposed I must be some freakish homeless person who wandered in - instead of their project leader/CTO. That was back in the days when meetings always started with an animalistic display of getting your tech out on the table to pose with. Somehow that little Nokia really emasculated and pissed them off. These were the same people who could talk about "efficiency" all day long, but the actual reality of doing more with less undermined some more powerful, lower drive. [0] https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/andy-farnell-perils-of-e-waste-and-benefits/id1504443346 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/andy-farnell-perils-of...

agentultra 2y ago
Recycling is definitely one area of engineering that is under appreciated and difficult. The tech involved in recycling solar panels. Sheesh. Specialized equipment and patented processes. All to separate polymers from the metals and minerals. It’s currently more expensive than mining new material. The challenge will be to make it affordable enough that it makes sense. But general electronic waste? I can’t even imagine. It sucks that instead of answering the challenge the world is collectively shrugging and dumping it in places like Ghana. Update: Part of the recycling equation is not only designing electronics to be repaired and re-used but also designing them to be easier to recycle. In the solar panel field there are experimental designs that give new panels the same durability and life expectancy without the polymers which would reduce the cost of recycling them at end-of-life quite significantly. Computing is... going in a different direction. Optimizing density at the component level makes for more power-efficient designs and some efficiency in the supply chain... but it makes recycling and repair waaaaaaaay harder. Not sure it's worth the effort tbh.
- nonrandomstring 2y ago
  > Not sure it's worth the effort tbh. It is for the gold. So much that in the UK we had our Royal Mint start a proper industrial pipeline for e-waste [0]. What I found heartbreaking from the stories from India, China and Africa is that mainly kids of about 8 - 16 yo work on illegal recycling. They smash up the e-waste by hand, so they're breathing in dust clouds of plastic and metal particles, PFAS, glass fragments, PCB... Then they wash out the recoverables using a light aqua-regia (mix of nitric and hydrochloric acid). The industrial health effects are unimaginable. EDIT: Just saw your update and concur that design-for-RRR is the way forward. [0] https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20230904-how-the-royal-mint-is-turning-electronic-waste-into-gold https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20230904-how-the-royal-mi...

agentultra 2y ago

Recycling is definitely one area of engineering that is under appreciated and difficult. The tech involved in recycling solar panels. Sheesh. Specialized equipment and patented processes. All to separate polymers from the metals and minerals. It’s currently more expensive than mining new material. The challenge will be to make it affordable enough that it makes sense. But general electronic waste? I can’t even imagine. It sucks that instead of answering the challenge the world is collectively shrugging and dumping it in places like Ghana. Update: Part of the recycling equation is not only designing electronics to be repaired and re-used but also designing them to be easier to recycle. In the solar panel field there are experimental designs that give new panels the same durability and life expectancy without the polymers which would reduce the cost of recycling them at end-of-life quite significantly. Computing is... going in a different direction. Optimizing density at the component level makes for more power-efficient designs and some efficiency in the supply chain... but it makes recycling and repair waaaaaaaay harder. Not sure it's worth the effort tbh.

nonrandomstring 2y ago
> Not sure it's worth the effort tbh. It is for the gold. So much that in the UK we had our Royal Mint start a proper industrial pipeline for e-waste [0]. What I found heartbreaking from the stories from India, China and Africa is that mainly kids of about 8 - 16 yo work on illegal recycling. They smash up the e-waste by hand, so they're breathing in dust clouds of plastic and metal particles, PFAS, glass fragments, PCB... Then they wash out the recoverables using a light aqua-regia (mix of nitric and hydrochloric acid). The industrial health effects are unimaginable. EDIT: Just saw your update and concur that design-for-RRR is the way forward. [0] https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20230904-how-the-royal-mint-is-turning-electronic-waste-into-gold https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20230904-how-the-royal-mi...