Live data from Hacker News

Europe Is Guaranteeing Citizens the Right to Repair

reasonstobecheerful.world

281–290 of 366 posts

Re: Europe Is Guaranteeing Citizens the Right to Repair

#281

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.

Sounds quite easy to be solved by producers. Just send the trash to third-party country. Mission completed.

When there is the news leaking out, producer could blame on the contractor and sue them. A nice model. Isn't it?

Re: Europe Is Guaranteeing Citizens the Right to Repair

#282

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…

>The first and third should not be on equal footing with the second.

What?

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

I read as 1)Reuse 2)Recycle 3)Reduce.

The best thing a manufacturer could do is create a bomb proof smartphone that will be usable forever.

Re: Europe Is Guaranteeing Citizens the Right to Repair

#283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> an espresso machine ... performs twice as well as an equivalent device from 50 years ago This is a terrible example. How coffee is made has not changed much, so machines don’t need to change much. New hardware trends towards more plastic, more logic boards and at the worst end of the scale, more proprietary parts, including the actual coffee. I have repaired and built up several 25+ year old espresso machines and g…

50 years ago, there were no cheap home espresso machines, only the US$3K commercial versions you work on. What changed was not the way coffee is made, but the way coffee is sold and consumer grade machines are manufactured at scale. We now have cheap espresso machines which don't last very long, as you have noted. I bought one last week second hand for $70. The new price for that machine was $300, but the guy sold it…

Keep an eye out for Mazzer ones (Super Jolly or Luigi, but other models are also great). They are indestructible as far as I can tell. While there are better ones out there, there aren’t many that are as inexpensive second hand, whilst also being easy to get parts and instructions for.

Re: Europe Is Guaranteeing Citizens the Right to Repair

#284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

>The first and third should not be on equal footing with the second. What? >> 1) Making their things easy to repair. 2) Creating in house recycling programs. 3) Making equipment more durable and longer lasting I read as 1)Reuse 2)Recycle 3)Reduce. The best thing a manufacturer could do is create a bomb proof smartphone that will be usable forever.

I think you and @stretchcat are saying the same thing. Ease-of-repair and durability are more important than recycling.

Re: Europe Is Guaranteeing Citizens the Right to Repair

#285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

>The first and third should not be on equal footing with the second. What? >> 1) Making their things easy to repair. 2) Creating in house recycling programs. 3) Making equipment more durable and longer lasting I read as 1)Reuse 2)Recycle 3)Reduce. The best thing a manufacturer could do is create a bomb proof smartphone that will be usable forever.

> The best thing a manufacturer could do is create a bomb proof smartphone that will be usable forever.

This is illogical. Smartphones become obsolete for technology reasons even if they're bomb proof and usable forever. So they need to recyclable (or components reusable) as the priority.

Old Nokias were built to last and still work.. but they're e-waste because they're obsolete for the purposes almost everyone needs a phone for. Maybe it'd be better if they'd be more recyclable instead of more robust?

Re: Europe Is Guaranteeing Citizens the Right to Repair

#286
post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OTOH, you can wind up with stuff like installing an OS that requires more than the device has to offer- like installing the most recent version of Ubuntu Desktop on a Intel Core2 Duo isn't going to go well, nor did installing iOS 7 on iPhone 4's- which I remember eagerly installing without realizing the major slowdown all the new features added that I couldn't undo.

Linux usually works perfectly fine with old hardware, a Intel Core2 Duo should be completely enough. That's even 64 bit hardware. Worst case you have to swap out Gnome with something more minimal, but that's unlikely.

I'm currently running Manjaro with i3wm on a laptop with a core 2 duo. It came with a couple of simple conky widgets enabled by default and those probably took 5-10 seconds to load. Just boxes, one with static text and the other with load statistics. Resizing windows is a little painful, as is opening them.

I3 runs reasonably well, but Gnome would probably be too heavy to make for an enjoyable experience.

Re: Europe Is Guaranteeing Citizens the Right to Repair

#287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The first and third should not be on equal footing with the second. What? >> 1) Making their things easy to repair. 2) Creating in house recycling programs. 3) Making equipment more durable and longer lasting I read as 1)Reuse 2)Recycle 3)Reduce. The best thing a manufacturer could do is create a bomb proof smartphone that will be usable forever.

> The best thing a manufacturer could do is create a bomb proof smartphone that will be usable forever. This is illogical. Smartphones become obsolete for technology reasons even if they're bomb proof and usable forever. So they need to recyclable (or components reusable) as the priority. Old Nokias were built to last and still work.. but they're e-waste because they're obsolete for the purposes almost everyone needs…

Presumably for smartphones, 'reuse' would mean devices that get software updates for long enough they can go through 2 or 3 users.

Re: Europe Is Guaranteeing Citizens the Right to Repair

#288

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

> You guys are forgetting another part of the chain, which can make decisions - consumers. Bad idea. The market is supposed to process information for us. Consumers are just individuals who know what they need and what they want, but not much else. The market (if we are to believe the hype) can process enough information to make selfish actors in aggregate cooperate. So why not let the market solve it? Consumer-respo…

having end-users "compute" is the most distributed form that is available. You just need to provide a necessary input for the computation (cost of disposing what they bought). In fact, I almost finished my response with "so why not let the market solve it?" =)

Re: Europe Is Guaranteeing Citizens the Right to Repair

#290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The first and third should not be on equal footing with the second. What? >> 1) Making their things easy to repair. 2) Creating in house recycling programs. 3) Making equipment more durable and longer lasting I read as 1)Reuse 2)Recycle 3)Reduce. The best thing a manufacturer could do is create a bomb proof smartphone that will be usable forever.

> The best thing a manufacturer could do is create a bomb proof smartphone that will be usable forever. This is illogical. Smartphones become obsolete for technology reasons even if they're bomb proof and usable forever. So they need to recyclable (or components reusable) as the priority. Old Nokias were built to last and still work.. but they're e-waste because they're obsolete for the purposes almost everyone needs…

I’ve broken far far more phones than I’ve had to replace because they became obsolete. If we came anywhere close to most phones lasting until they are outmoded we’d be doing good.
Post reply on HN