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

Europe Is Guaranteeing Citizens the Right to Repair

reasonstobecheerful.world

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

241–250 of 366 posts

Re: Europe Is Guaranteeing Citizens the Right to Repair

#241

Post by corty »

aembleton wrote: post #170
ogre_codes wrote: post #164

I kind of wonder if we're looking at solving this the wrong way. Instead of mandating that manufacturers take specific steps to fix the waste problem, maybe it would be better to tag items at manufacture and charge device makers a percentage based on how long before it enters the waste stream. Manufacturers could solve this by either: - Making their things easy to repair - Creating in house recycling programs - Makin…

Making the producers responsible for the disposal might be the best way. I don't exactly know how it would be implemented but I'd like to see it for packaging too. Local authorities should be able to collect up all Mcdonalds packaging and hand it back to them. Make them responsible for its disposal. Then they will be incentivised to reduce the amount of packaging that they produce.

Germany has had this for years. Producers have to pay a recycling fee covering the disposal of the packaging they use. The yellow garbage can for recyclables is paid for by that fee. Also, merchants have to take back and dispose of any packaging they sell or use to ship.

Hasn't really helped, amount of packaging is still increasing.

Re: Europe Is Guaranteeing Citizens the Right to Repair

#242

Post by acdha »

paradox242 wrote: post #119
fridek wrote: post #5

I can't describe how much I hope something comes out of it. Not because I have some illusion of this tackling corporate greed, or helping the environment - devices will likely become more expensive and bulkier as a result, supply chain of replacement parts is generating heaps of waste too. I simply am surrounded by tens and hundreds of sort-of-broken devices that don't force me to replace yet, but are not fixable eit…

Common things that existed 20, 30, or even 40 years like refrigerators, coffee machines, dishwashers, washers, and dryers, often lasted 10 or 20 years in some cases, and could be repaired. We have witnessed the steep decline of device reliability in my lifetime, and our expectations are so low that the latest appliance we buy we consider lucky if no problems develop in 2-3 years. Anything serious requires you to usua…

We’ve had declines in some areas - IoT being an obvious culprit - but there are two major confounds belying that anecdotal belief:

1. You don’t see the junk which never lasted 20 years - plenty of stuff died back then, too. Cutting corners to save a buck is a very, very old practice - I’d be surprised if you couldn’t find some Babylonian tablet complaining about it.

2. Manufacturers generally switched from letting prices go up to introducing new products. If you buy stuff which costs as much (adjusted for inflation) as what your parents laid, it often lasts just as long. The problem is that a lot of us only buy the cheapest thing and are then surprised when a $400 purchase now doesn’t hold up as well as a purchase which cost $1,000 in today’s dollars – and the one costing $1,000 today probably does much better.

Styles also change - for example, a lot of athletic gear became very focused on ultralight performance: great for racers but almost always less durable. Does that mean you can’t buy the older style or just that you need to shop differently?

It’s definitely the case that there are areas where it’s harder to find durable options (IoT causing a generation of devices to lose features or fail long before the hardware does) but it’s less pronounced than old people complaining believe. It’s really harder to correct for subtle biases for things like inflation which happen over long periods of time.

Re: Europe Is Guaranteeing Citizens the Right to Repair

#243

Post by stretchcat »

ogre_codes wrote: post #164

I kind of wonder if we're looking at solving this the wrong way. Instead of mandating that manufacturers take specific steps to fix the waste problem, maybe it would be better to tag items at manufacture and charge device makers a percentage based on how long before it enters the waste stream. Manufacturers could solve this by either: - Making their things easy to repair - Creating in house recycling programs - Makin…

> 1) Making their things easy to repair. 2) Creating in house recycling programs. 3) Making equipment more durable and longer lasting

The first and third should not be on equal footing with the second. Reduce, Reuse, Recycle is meant to be applied in that order. Many environmental crimes can be hidden in a recycling program. Many products are not truly recyclable, but tell consumers they are. Sometimes they are only partially recyclable, or other times the recycling is technically possible but economically infeasible and consequently doesn't actually happen. Corporations know this and have promoted recycling to equal footing as reuse and reduction. They would rather people consume more and casually throw broken products into their recycling bin, naively believing they're being responsible consumers.

Re: Europe Is Guaranteeing Citizens the Right to Repair

#244

Post by stretchcat »

marcosdumay wrote: post #206
lostlogin wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Local authorities should be able to collect up all Mcdonalds packaging and hand it back to them. Yes, with a bill for the cost of collection and at some point (after repeated failures?), a fine to motivate a course correction.

> after repeated failures? Failure to do what?

Failure to reduce the amount of trash they're handing out to their customers.

Re: Europe Is Guaranteeing Citizens the Right to Repair

#245

Post by rusk »

fridek wrote: post #59
rusk wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty sure these are usually standard bulbs ...

Trust me I'm an engineer? But always happy to have HN debug my fridge, so here we go: turns out the light bulb, when replaced, keeps overheating and even metled the surrounding casing. Some electrical issue I'd have to take the fridge apart to debug. I might be unfair with this one though, it's a 20 year old fridge and is probably serviceable.

Keeps melting .. in a fridge ... it should never be on more than 30s at a time surely?

I guess you’ve tried a lower wattage bulb ...

Re: Europe Is Guaranteeing Citizens the Right to Repair

#246

Post by emteycz »

BossHamster wrote: post #240
emteycz wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should switch to the official OS then - it just got an update. As it also did 3, 6 and 12 months ago.

What are you talking about? The last update for the "official" OS was for Android 8.0. That was two years ago.

Mine got OS update just this week. Not sure what the Android version is though, it's now my girlfriend's phone. It did the OS reinstall screen.

Re: Europe Is Guaranteeing Citizens the Right to Repair

#247

Post by aembleton »

zepearl wrote: post #238
hippich wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You guys are forgetting another part of the chain, which can make decisions - consumers. If cost of throwing something away increases - may be that will make consumers choose something more reliable and serviceable. As if right now residential trash pickup service probably covers just the labor and machinery to get trash to the landfill

Some notes about how all this is handled in Switzerland: 1- electronics HW (HDD, TV, microSD-card, etc..) recycling costs are already embedded in the cost of any new stuff that is sold (there is a little bit of extra price to be paid when buying new HW, that in turn will cover the costs to recycle the old HW that is probably being replaced or that will be replaced in the future). People dump their old HW to collectio…

Does Switzerland have any problems with illegal dumping? I'd imagine charging per bag of waste would cause that to increase.

Re: Europe Is Guaranteeing Citizens the Right to Repair

#248

Post by anthonybennis »

zepearl wrote: post #238
hippich wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You guys are forgetting another part of the chain, which can make decisions - consumers. If cost of throwing something away increases - may be that will make consumers choose something more reliable and serviceable. As if right now residential trash pickup service probably covers just the labor and machinery to get trash to the landfill

Some notes about how all this is handled in Switzerland: 1- electronics HW (HDD, TV, microSD-card, etc..) recycling costs are already embedded in the cost of any new stuff that is sold (there is a little bit of extra price to be paid when buying new HW, that in turn will cover the costs to recycle the old HW that is probably being replaced or that will be replaced in the future). People dump their old HW to collectio…

Similar situation in Ireland to above regulations and processes. Also, if you buy anything with a plug, the retailer must accept the equivalent appliance you are replacing and recycle.

Re: Europe Is Guaranteeing Citizens the Right to Repair

#249

Post by esturk »

JoshTko wrote: post #217

This doesn't make sense. I have sold every single iPhone that I have owned (about 6), and virtually all were 100% functional at time of sale. Making the products openable will likely to make them heavier, more expensive, larger, and more prone to damage (i.e., water damage), and thus less durable overall. I don't want this as a consumer as it will lead to more waste.

Not sure how your personal anecdote comes into play. So you have replaced your phone every 2 years while it's still working, good for you. But have you considered that some people will replace their phone only when it's broken beyond repair?

Re: Europe Is Guaranteeing Citizens the Right to Repair

#250

Post by aembleton »

ogre_codes wrote: post #219
TeMPOraL wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Roads, or rivers. In rural areas of Poland, it's still common to find illegal trash dumps in the woods or by the streams; any ditch will do. And there goes everything, from biowaste to furniture and television sets.

Yeah. One of the places I ride has a few very conspicuous dumps of obvious construction trash and it is extremely irritating. In this case, it's a bunch of asphalt roofing... very heavy and likely expensive at the dump. Its bad enough I almost think we should just eliminate all dump fees and charge everything upstream. If you charge for disposal at the time of sale, then you don't need to charge at the time of dispos…

And you incentivize the creators of the waste to minimise it.
Post reply on HN