Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: Why are electronics still so unrecyclable?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 143 posts

Re: Ask HN: Why are electronics still so unrecyclable?

#11

Post by Apreche »

This is why the saying has always been “reduce, reuse, recycle” in that order.

Reducing is the best. Don’t buy or make surplus stuff, and that reduces waste overall.

Reusing is second best. If we did make something, the best thing to do is get as much use out of it as possible to prevent it from ever becoming trash.

Recycling is the last resort. Regardless of what is being recycled, it is an expensive and difficult process to try to salvage any value from the waste materials rather than just abandoning them.

Because recycling electronics is such a difficult problem, if we want to reduce e-waste a better idea is to increase our efforts to reduce and reuse them as much as possible. Installing Linux on an old laptop to keep it useful for somebody is easy to do, and much more effective than trying to recycle it.

Re: Ask HN: Why are electronics still so unrecyclable?

#13

Post by ahf8Aithaex7Nai »

The reason is simply that there are not enough incentives for manufacturers to do so. I would be happy if nothing on smartphones was glued together but everything was screwed or plugged in, and if I could simply replace batteries in smartphones and laptops, as was the case in the past. If these things are not made mandatory requirements, the thinner device, the lighter device, the device where the manufacturer can use battery life as the upper limit for device life will win.

I don't know anything about chips and boards, but in the EU, a regulation will come into force in 2027 that requires batteries in portable devices to be replaceable by the user without special tools.

Re: Ask HN: Why are electronics still so unrecyclable?

#14

Post by porise »

Apreche wrote: post #11

This is why the saying has always been “reduce, reuse, recycle” in that order. Reducing is the best. Don’t buy or make surplus stuff, and that reduces waste overall. Reusing is second best. If we did make something, the best thing to do is get as much use out of it as possible to prevent it from ever becoming trash. Recycling is the last resort. Regardless of what is being recycled, it is an expensive and difficult p…

I heard they changed it to 5Rs.

Refuse, reduce, reuse, recyle, rot.

Re: Ask HN: Why are electronics still so unrecyclable?

#15

Post by amelius »

danrecht wrote: post #4

Collecting small things from many sources over meaningful distances is hard. Separating things made of many materials is hard, especially when some components are hazardous. Purifying materials drawn from waste is hard. These aren’t impossible challenges, but physical facts of the problem that have kept costs too high for electronics recycling to be widespread. Longer lasting electronics that can be repurposed or reu…

> Longer lasting electronics that can be repurposed or reused is the lever I’d be most excited to pull here.

Capitalists are pulling the lever in the other direction, though. And there's many of them. Or they pay people to pull.

Re: Ask HN: Why are electronics still so unrecyclable?

#16

Post by tjwebbnorfolk »

Recycling stuff is hard, expensive, and energy-intensive. Why should electronics be uniquely recyclable?

We need to get past this idea that just because recycling makes you feel good must mean it IS good. Most of the time recycling stuff uses more CO2 than simply throwing it into a hole and making another one.

Re: Ask HN: Why are electronics still so unrecyclable?

#18

Post by wongarsu »

tastyfreeze wrote: post #8
danrecht wrote: post #4

Collecting small things from many sources over meaningful distances is hard. Separating things made of many materials is hard, especially when some components are hazardous. Purifying materials drawn from waste is hard. These aren’t impossible challenges, but physical facts of the problem that have kept costs too high for electronics recycling to be widespread. Longer lasting electronics that can be repurposed or reu…

Depends on what you are trying to recover. Recovering precious metals from electronics is no more difficult than processing precious metal ore.

Which comes back around to logistics and scale: refining ore is cheap because ore is delivered on multiple 300t haul trucks or in giant trains

Re: Ask HN: Why are electronics still so unrecyclable?

#19

Post by mahrain »

I was shocked to find that even electronics that are collected in Europe seem to be shipped to Africa, set on fire, and at most, metals are collected from the ashes, including traces of gold and copper. That's about it. Batteries have a bit better recycling path but not by much.

Re: Ask HN: Why are electronics still so unrecyclable?

#20

Post by lgleason »

Repairability would help as well. Many times the only viable option to fix something is to swap a board, or replace the entire item, instead of replacing the one failed component that caused the board to fail, or reflowing the board etc.. Many components also do not offer batteries that can be replaced, such as the magic mouse, so you end up needing to replace the entire item.

It's interesting how as certain things age, such as cars, cottage industries pop up to do just that when new replacement boards and parts are not available.

The other issue is cost cutting. Many components are made cheaply and fail pre-maturely. Great examples of this are mains voltage LED bulbs where the rectifier circuits that power the LED's fail, but the only real option is to replace the entire thing, creating a lot of e-waste in the process.

Post reply on HN