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Ask HN: Why are electronics still so unrecyclable?

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

#101

Post by tonyedgecombe »

smileysteve wrote: post #96
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…

To put this in perspective, there are huge issues recyling lead acid batteries exposed this year. I consider lead acid batteries relatively simple with all materials being large and not particularly binding. But it's somehow easy to outsource this to a smelter with inappropriate smelting, and no controls on worker safety. So anything smaller, more complex, or more interewined, with things like silica involved...

Interestingly lead acid batteries are the most recycled consumer goods.

Of course that’s not to say there are no problems with the process.

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

#102

Post by AngryData »

lefra wrote: post #46
lgleason wrote: post #20

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 a…

Changing the PCB for a known-good one: $10 + maybe half an hour of low-skill work. Changing the failing component: maybe a few minutes, probably a few hours of an electronics engineer that's familiar with the design (plus his expensive tools). He's probably bad at soldering, so you'll need someone else to do that. Then you need to revalidate the board. It almost never make economical sense to try to repair the board.

If we were provided board and part diagrams it might be worth it because then you don't need an actual engineer or super highly knowledgeable person to waste a few hours of time just to diagnose most problems. But because we lack such diagrams whoever is diagnosing it also has to reverse engineer how it works in their head.

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

#103

Post by pibaker »

If you buy ICs from a Chinese source, there is a good chance you will get something desoldered from e-waste. People don't like it unless they have no choice because there is less guarantee it actually works plus there is the ick factor.

Anything less valuable than an IC is probably not worth the labor required to recycle it.

On a side note, it is funny to see posters demanding that the company pay for the full recycling cost of their devices. We required the nuclear industry to do the same with nuclear waste and reactor decommission. The result is artificially inflating the cost of one of the best ways to cleanly generate electricity to the point that it became uneconomical to built nuclear so we ended up burning more coal instead. Be careful with second order effects of your feel good solutions to complicated problems.

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

#104

Post by AngryData »

kube-system wrote: post #71
lgleason wrote: post #20

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 a…

I'm all for repairability, but as labor costs go up and manufacturing costs go down, the window for which there is incentive to repair narrows. e.g. there's no amount of repairability design that you could apply to a $3 light bulb which would encourage people to pay someone western wages to repair. I think we're better off lobbying for better standards to communicate the quality of a bulb's design. The whole reason w…

If you could disassemble and diagnose a failing $3 bulb in 60 seconds, you wouldn't need to hire someone at western wages to fix it. But because it is glued together to not be taken apart, and there are no diagrams for how anything in it works or is put together, it isn't worth the time even if you have a station and equipment all ready setup and replacement component on hand. 95% of the time fixing electronics is just figuring out how they were put together in the first place so you can diagnostically trace along the circuit.

Not that I think lightbulbs are probably worth saving, but expand it to any other device which gets exponentially more complex and it is easy to see why they don't get diagnosed, not to mention repaired. With a board diagram I can point at a spot on the board and say "I should see 15 volts here", without a board diagram i gotta draw out and figure out how the power supply even works so I know what it is suppose to be outputting and then trace that all the way to the test point to make sure there isn't other crap inline before then that might change what I see.

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

#105

Post by AngryData »

If things are hard or impossible to repair, that means they are even harder and more impossible to recycle. If we built devices to be repaired, not only would less of them get trashed to start with, but the stuff that does get trashed would be much easier to recycle.

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

#106

Post by happymellon »

charcircuit wrote: post #83
happymellon wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have to be careful with that phrase through. > using bio-degradable options where there is one A lot of "biodegradable" will use a literal interpretation, in that it it degrades in nature. 500 years you say? But it still degrades... Home compostable is really the only one that makes sense. Even industrial composting requires a high heat environment as the catalyst, so if something contaminates the batch and goes…

500 years is only a blink in Earths lifespan.

But its a lot longer than most people expect biodegradable to mean.

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

#107

Post by Pfhortune »

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…

This is why every device should be bootloader-unlockable (with legal enforcement). There's billions of old phones and IoT devices out there locked to outdated software. This has to change.

If it can't be unlocked, it can't be sold. That should be the law.

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

#108

Post by macarabaua2k26 »

pibaker wrote: post #103

If you buy ICs from a Chinese source, there is a good chance you will get something desoldered from e-waste. People don't like it unless they have no choice because there is less guarantee it actually works plus there is the ick factor. Anything less valuable than an IC is probably not worth the labor required to recycle it. On a side note, it is funny to see posters demanding that the company pay for the full recycl…

> The result is artificially inflating the cost of one of the best ways to cleanly generate electricity to the point that it became uneconomical

Source of this?

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

#109

Post by tredre3 »

KellyCriterion wrote: post #84
MadVikingGod wrote: post #69

The ultimate reason is there isn't economic reason so. It cost's a lot to recycle anything, and most electronics would net you almost nothing valuable. Let's look at an example. Let's say your phones main board, which will net a few hundred grams of raw materials. First thing by weight the actual board itself is probably the biggest, if you could perfectly decompose it to it's parts you would have some fiberglass, gl…

There are stats that in 1t of recycled smartphones is around 200g of Gold, while in mining 1t contains around 2-3% of Gold. Does this match somehow?

> while in mining 1t contains around 2-3% of Gold

Where in the world would that be true? That would be 800 - 1000 ounces per ton! As far as I know the best pay dirt produces a handful of ounces per ton, or 0.01%.

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

#110

Post by Ekaros »

marcosdumay wrote: post #53
porise wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I heard they changed it to 5Rs. Refuse, reduce, reuse, recyle, rot.

Ignoring the ambiguity of the word "refuse", that often means "turn into trash", it's also completely redundant with "reduce". To the point that it doesn't add anything new. Anyway, "rot" is a good one.

There is overlap but I can see some distinction. Refuse might be simply not in first place buying some product group say a smartwatch. Where as reduce would be buying one but updating it less often. One could argue that refusing entire products is easier than reducing use.
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