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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?

#61

Post by Findecanor »

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…

Human-scale engineering is underrated. It is very satisfying when you can repair something yourself using your hands, without having to need specialist equipment.

For example when you have a circuit board that can be serviced with a soldering iron, without having to use a microscope or reflow-oven.

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

#62

Post by Findecanor »

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…

I think that plastic parts, such as enclosures for electronic devices, should have resin identification codes moulded in them — just like plastic packaging does, so they could be recycled too within the same system.

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

#63

Post by benhill70 »

jltsiren wrote: post #40
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 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…

I think you are forgetting about time. If the rate of stuff needing to get recycle is lower, then there is more time to recycle. If there the rate is too high then the facilities are overwhelmed and resort to less optimal strategies.

This is why reduce and reuse are important.

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

#64

Post by ajb »

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.

That one seems like it should fall foul of thermodynamics, I guess. Just melting everything together probably increases entropy to the extent that it's at best like extracting elements from mining ore. Whereas before you do that, there is organisation and substances are more concentrated. Well, that's a bit hand-wavy - perhaps someone with actual knowledge of thermodynamics will comment.

I think what recyclers do currently is at least break everything into small pieces, some of which might have a decent concentration of something useful

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

#65

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

ajb wrote: post #64
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That one seems like it should fall foul of thermodynamics, I guess. Just melting everything together probably increases entropy to the extent that it's at best like extracting elements from mining ore. Whereas before you do that, there is organisation and substances are more concentrated. Well, that's a bit hand-wavy - perhaps someone with actual knowledge of thermodynamics will comment. I think what recyclers do cur…

Nothing falls afoul of thermodynamics. This is not a closed system - you can inject as much energy into as you have available. Entropy and thermodynamics play no role here, but I would imagine that (a) the cost of the energy require (b) containment technology (c) what happens after you extract a given substance are/were all very involved in its failure.

This is already done with crude oil, and is called "cat cracking". You heat the crude oil until every component in it becomes gaseous (but still small-molecule) - the smaller the molecules they higher they rise up the "chimney", so you can siphon off particular components at particular heights.

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

#66

Post by bigyabai »

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 you have a surplus of donor components, board-level repair can be very feasible and often even profitable depending on the board.

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

#67

Post by gtowey »

matt_heimer wrote: post #38

Ease of recycling is not prioritized during design or manufacturing because there is no monetary incentive (for the manufacturer) to do so it most cases. It would eat into profits. Simple as that. Unless a component is expensive to manufactory and recycling/reuse could save the manufacturer money it won't happen. The only real solution are laws requiring it.

The full cost of recycling things should be part of the cost of the product at the time of sale.

What you would find quickly, is that there is little to no profit on the manufacturing and sale of new devices and the value of repairs and reuse would skyrocket.

Right now companies are allowed to steal money from the future by ignoring the problem of what happens to these devices once they leave the factory. The truth is that they become hazardous waste, and lock away valuable resources inside of trash.

The reality is that there is no real economic benefit to the current model of ever increasing sales of new goods. But the capitalists, as ever, have been extracting money out of it by making the unpleasant, expensive parts someone else's liability. Namely ours.

Riches built from value extraction and arbitrage against the future. And most of us cannot conceive of it being any other way.

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

#68

Post by makapuf »

iancmceachern wrote: post #25

Because they are so manufacturable. When we design these things (which I do for a living) we often find we are forced into tradeoffs between repairability/recycleability and manufacturability/cost. The market wants cheaper and cheaper things. To accommodate we need to make them less repairable and recyclable.

Infortunately, this is where free market stops being a good optimizer and manual settings (laws) need to apply by requiring raiparability, which is difficult (but not completely impossible) to quantify.

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

#69

Post by MadVikingGod »

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, glue, a few grams of copper, and maybe a trace amount of gold. Next you would have the different components, mostly ICs but let's cover them next. These are mostly plastic with bits of copper, tin, and other more exotic metals. Most of these could be used again, if you can separate them and sort them. There would be a bunch of solder, which maybe could be reused, if you remix it with more flux. Finally, you'll have chips, these could be reused, but only as replacements for the same chip. Getting anything out of these would mostly be removing the bulk of the material which is silicon that's been contaminated with other elements to make the semiconductors. I don't think there is any process right now that could take doped Si and get you anything back. Besides the silicon you have micrograms of gold and other conductors.

Having put all that down, I think there could be an opportunity to take the bulk components off boards, test and sort them, and sell them in bulk.

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

#70

Post by frankus »

wongarsu wrote: post #18
tastyfreeze wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I wonder if part of it is also that mining companies are generally allowed to just leave their tailings in a big pile near the mine rather than have to responsibly dispose of the majority of the ore that has no (or negative) commercial value.
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