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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?

#91

Post by wolvoleo »

ASalazarMX wrote: post #89
entropicdrifter wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

2-3% of 1 ton is 40-60 pounds of gold, and that's using the smaller, non-metric tons. 200g is about half a pound, so you'd be looking at 80x more gold per ton from traditional mining on the low end

And the gold in electronics is usually in microscopically thin layers, so it only makes commercial sense to extract it when other sources become more expensive... and at that point, doing an ecological extraction won't be a top priority. Really, the reduce and reuse parts are our best bet, because recycling only delays the inevitable, unless some groundbreaking technological change achieves 100% electronics recycling…

I think the best way to do this would be to grind it all up and then melt the material and distill it into different components.

Manually it's indeed not recoverable like that.

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

#92

Post by landl0rd »

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…

It'd work fine if you just ionize everything; easy to separate then. Just hilariously inefficient given the amount of energy required.

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

#93

Post by refulgentis »

jltsiren wrote: post #73
benhill70 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's misleading because it focuses on actions that are clearly not working. People on the average are increasing their consumption, not reducing it. That means the actual problem — the waste at the end of the pipeline — is growing every year. Waste management is the actual problem that needs to be solved. "Reduce and reuse" can be a part of the solution, but people are not doing enough voluntarily to make it a major…

I'm genuinely curious about your position, it's interesting.

But I can't figure it out what it'd look like in practice, might be hangover, might be I need more caffeine, whatever it is, it's on me. Don't read following as "you're saying X and thats silly!"

(A) Are consumption rates in general unsustainable?

(B) If (A) is no, are consumption rates of specific items unsustainable? For example, is the legislation you're thinking of like the deprecation of plastic bags for paper? Or something that covers a much wider amount of consumption?

(C) If (A) is "yes" or (B) is "more global", at huge scales like an economy, legislating quotas or rationing or anything at all, in practice pushes activity onto black markets.

If the concern is changing individual behavior, and individual behavior isn't changing on it's own sufficiently, what sort of legislation would change it?

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

#94

Post by ajb »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #65
ajb wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I wasn't arguing that it is impossible, which as you say, is only true in a closed system. What I was saying was that since you wasted the organisation of the system, sorting it out again is going to take more energy than if you didn't. I think that's a consequence of the fact that you increased the entropy.

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

#95

Post by JohnFen »

Findecanor wrote: post #62
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.

Except that despite those codes on plastic packaging, almost no plastic packaging gets recycled. Most of what you put in the recycling bin just ends up in the landfill. The plastics industry has been scamming us on this point for years.

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

#96

Post by smileysteve »

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...

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

#97

Post by JohnFen »

tonymet wrote: post #74

The concept of Recycling ( nearly all the materials can be reused with little cost or impact) is a myth. There are relatively few consumer products or materials that are readily recycled. It's not so much that electronics are unrecyclable, it's that nearly everything is unrecyclable. Recycling is nearly a fantasy. For the most part it has been a campaign for waste management firms to charge customers double while dem…

True.

In the US, anyway, the recyclable things are paper, glass, steel, aluminum, and asphalt.

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

#98

Post by KellyCriterion »

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…

> always been “reduce, reuse, recycle” in that order

my dev machine for boring CRUD apps is from 2011 :-D

the only thing I upgraded was RAM and a SSD - its a 4x 3Ghz board; it works quite well despite the fact that its 15 years old :)

(honestly, the only thing why I do not switch is because of reinstallig the whole setup)

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

#99

Post by filoeleven »

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…

> Separating things made of many materials is hard, especially when some components are hazardous.

Make the tech giants building robots solve this problem first.

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