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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?

#121

Post by mcswell »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #52
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…

At some point in the 90s I remember hearing an NPR story about a new startup that was "pioneering" technology that would basically permit atomic/small-molecule level "cat cracking" of just about anything: a furnace that was so hot that everything put inside it broke down to atoms/small-molecules which could then be fractionated off for re-use. I was so excited. I was so naive. The idea seems to have gone nowhere.

The Empire Strikes Back: scene where Chewy rescues C-3PO's parts from going into the recycling furnace.

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

#122

Post by brudgers »

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…

Reusing is better than reducing because “reducing” is only meaningful in terms of reducing consumption. The only way to reduce what you already have is either disposal or recycling or reuse.

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

#123

Post by AngryData »

kube-system wrote: post #115
AngryData wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ju…

> 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. Sure, I would. Maybe a lot of people on this forum would. But we're 0.0001% of people that use light bulbs. Our personal persuasions are pretty irrelevant in context. And most of the time it doesn't make financial sense for us to do it, it is just personally satisfying. The vast major…

If they had board diagrams or schematics that nephew could do a lot more than simply look for a blown fuse or wire. Nobody looks deeper than that because they know it is a waste of time without any reference materials.

No it doesn't solve all the problems, but how many TVs now sit in the dump because of the failure of some 1 cent part that nobody could diagnose even if they wanted because they would have to reverse engineer half the board, rather than probe a few different points on the board?

Appliance repair use to be big business. Did it stop being so because washers and TVs and vacuums became too complicated to understand, or the parts went up in cost, or because $1000 is considered cheap enough of a device to be considered disposable? No. They stopped existing because appliances stopped coming with the reference materials to repair them in a reasonable time and parts are obfuscated from their source so people don't even know what their broken part is half the time. Is that a thermistor, a capacitor, a diode that blew up? Have fun spending the next 2 hours tracing the obfuscated part number down through 5 different suppliers to figure it out because you obviously can't test a broken part and there is no schematic to look at and identify it from.

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

#124

Post by westurner »

Electronic waste: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_waste

From https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44269481 :

> From "Turning waste into gold" (2024) https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2024/02/240229124612.h... :

>> Researchers have recovered gold from electronic waste. Their highly sustainable new method is based on a protein fibril sponge, which the scientists derive from whey

/? e-waste: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

"“Toasterlike” Process Recovers Rare Earths From E-waste: Flash joule heating can recover important magnet metals" (2026) FJH https://spectrum.ieee.org/rare-earth-minerals-recycling-ewas...

Hydrogen plasma and hydrogen cold plasma can recycle plastic with less energy than FJH, FWIU.

I have some notes on a semiconductor fabrication process with just sustainable inputs: Ethyl Lactate, Lignin-Vitrimer, Nitrogen, CO2, Laser-induced Graphene, A-CNT, PCLP Photo-cleavable Lignin Polymer, Hexyl Cellulose

But A-CNT need to be encased in something to prevent health hazard if they burn. Phytic acid from e.g. Bran seed is high in phosphorous which might prevent health risks of CNT.

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

#125

Post by kube-system »

AngryData wrote: post #123
kube-system wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Sure, I would. Maybe a lot of people on this forum would. But we're 0.0001% of people that use light bulbs. Our personal persuasions are pretty irrelevant in context. And most of the time it doesn't make financial sense for us to do it, it is just personally satisfying. The vast major…

If they had board diagrams or schematics that nephew could do a lot more than simply look for a blown fuse or wire. Nobody looks deeper than that because they know it is a waste of time without any reference materials. No it doesn't solve all the problems, but how many TVs now sit in the dump because of the failure of some 1 cent part that nobody could diagnose even if they wanted because they would have to reverse e…

Major appliance repair is very much still a thing, and manufacturers share repair info under their partner programs. But this makes sense because shipping them back for warranty is prohibitively expensive and people are willing to pay a few hundred bucks to fix a couple thousand dollar appliance. They’re still not doing component level repair, because module replacement is still cheaper and more reliable.

Small appliances and electronics are not repaired as any more much because:

1. their real price has cratered over the past 50 years

2. they have more integrated and specialized parts that simply aren’t repairable or available

3. They have fewer mechanical parts prone to regular failure or which pay the bills for repair shops (belts, timers, etc)

4. They are far more complicated than their predecessors, and therefore more complicated to diagnose even if you have a schematic

But yeah, when everyone’s washing machine has a belt transmission and a clunky mechanical timer, they failed all the time and there were repair shops on every corner. But these places weren’t doing the type of work akin to SMD rework on a digital circuits.

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

#126

Post by WheelsAtLarge »

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…

True, it's the reason why most items aren't recycled. By far most items are buried or burnt rather than recycled. Our economic system is setup to minimize the manufacturing costs without considering disposal cost unless it's mandated. I don't think recycling will every be a real thing unless disposal costs become part of the overall price of manufacturing an item. Something that's mostly impossible unless it's mandated and people decide that trash is unacceptable or at least needs to be greatly minimized. Thinking about it, maybe at some point disposal cost will become so expensive that people won't buy new items unless sellers pay for trashing them.

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

#127

Post by kalleboo »

mcswell wrote: post #116
jltsiren wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find the "reduce, reuse, recycle" slogan misleading. Everything that is manufactured will eventually become waste that must be disposed of responsibly. The overall volume of manufacturing only goes up if we leave it to the market, and there is no serious political will to legislate it down. That leaves us with an ever-increasing volume of waste that must be dealt with, making waste management an increasingly import…

In addition to the volume issue, there's the composition issue. When I was a kid, we recycled all our flint cores. Well, not quite that far back... Milk came in glass bottles, and the person who delivered the bottles of milk to our house picked up the empties to take back to the dairy. There were also steel cans for canned food and soft drinks (which eventually rusts away), and of course lots of other glass bottles.…

When I grew up in Sweden, soda was sold in standardized glass bottles. All brands used the same bottles and they just put paper labels on. You'd return the glass bottles for a deposit, they'd take them in, remove the label, wash then and refill them. You could tell how old the glass bottle you were drinking out of was by how scratched the label was.

In the 90's, they were all replaced by PET bottles. We were told at the time that this was because the oil used in the plastic bottles was still less than the extra oil used to ship the heavy glass bottles back and forth.

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

#128

Post by reverius42 »

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.

I think the idea is "buy nothing (in that category)" instead of "buy fewer things (in that category)" but I agree it's both ambiguous and ham-fisted.

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

#130

Post by KellyCriterion »

tredre3 wrote: post #109
KellyCriterion wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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%.

https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/16/6/2509

"Indeed, a natural ore mine can produce 5 g of gold (Au) per ton of ore, while 200–250 g Au can be recovered from the same mass of computer boards (300–350 g Au/t for mobile phones) [6]."

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