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The environmental impact of technology devices is getting worse

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Re: The environmental impact of technology devices is getting worse

#51

Post by JoeAltmaier »

the_gastropod wrote: post #44
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect its long past the day when a marginal change in consumption will actually affect the world, even a little. The production of meat (and phones) does not change at all for small adjustments in demand - they are far too large an industry with far too large a lead time to respond to much at all. In fact, using homebrew solutions or alternative sources actually increases my environmental footprint. Now I'm not o…

You changing your diet will not have that big of an impact, you're right. Just like your vote won't sway an election. In aggregate, these things matter. In the U.S., over 9% [1] of the population follows a vegetarian/vegan diet. That absolutely has an impact on how much beef/chicken/pork is produced. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vegetarianism_by_country#Unite...

Not in the short term - again, the lead time of beef is years. And so on.

Re: The environmental impact of technology devices is getting worse

#52

Post by JoeAltmaier »

jdietrich wrote: post #38
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect its long past the day when a marginal change in consumption will actually affect the world, even a little. The production of meat (and phones) does not change at all for small adjustments in demand - they are far too large an industry with far too large a lead time to respond to much at all. In fact, using homebrew solutions or alternative sources actually increases my environmental footprint. Now I'm not o…

The market is not insensitive to consumer demand. Your choices don't make a significant impact, but the aggregate choices of all consumers is hugely significant. If we buy less meat and lobby for a reduction in agricultural subsidies, the inevitable result is a reduction in meat production, either through a direct response from producers or through the bankruptcy of less efficient producers.

How's that going for us so far? Its a hard sell, convincing people to change their behavior now (pointlessly; in fact to the detriment of the ecology short-term) for some theoretical good later.

Re: The environmental impact of technology devices is getting worse

#53

Post by jdietrich »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #52
jdietrich wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The market is not insensitive to consumer demand. Your choices don't make a significant impact, but the aggregate choices of all consumers is hugely significant. If we buy less meat and lobby for a reduction in agricultural subsidies, the inevitable result is a reduction in meat production, either through a direct response from producers or through the bankruptcy of less efficient producers.

How's that going for us so far? Its a hard sell, convincing people to change their behavior now (pointlessly; in fact to the detriment of the ecology short-term) for some theoretical good later.

The Ford F-150 is the biggest selling vehicle in the US. Ford haven't even tried to sell it in Europe, because there's no demand. They do sell the Ka, a model even smaller than the Fiesta that isn't available in the US.

Ten years ago, the market for grass-fed beef and organic vegetables was negligible. Consumer demand induced the agricultural industry to start shifting towards production techniques with a lower environmental impact.

Consumer demand matters.

Re: The environmental impact of technology devices is getting worse

#54

Post by jdietrich »

paulintrognon wrote: post #47
jdietrich wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The greatest myth in sustainable energy policy is "every little helps". We get caught up on visible but irrelevant things, while ignoring massive systemic problems. Apple publish high-quality, audited environmental impact reports for all their products. A 64gb iPhone 8 produces the equivalent of 57kg of CO2 across the entire product lifespan, from manufacturing to recycling. A return flight from LAX to JFK produces ~…

I understand what you say, and I agree for the most part, but it really seems impossible that a two-hour car journey emits more than manufacturing a smartphone... I mean, building a smartphone involves digging for raw materials, extract them, transport them, assemble them, etc. And i'm not counting the emission during the design process. I know that a two-hour car journey is really not optimized, and that manufacturi…

Imagine if you bought gasoline at the grocery store in two-liter bottles. You'd need to buy 31 bottles to fill the tank on a Ford Fusion. Think about what 31 bottles of soda would look like in a shopping cart. Think about the sheer effort of filling your cart with 31 bottles, pushing it to the parking lot and pouring the contents into your gas tank.

Someone had to build a giant platform in the ocean, drill a hole deep into the ground, pump the oil out of the ground and move it ashore, boil it in a giant distiller to extract the gasoline, pump it into a tanker and drive it to your gas station. All of that stuff is invisible, but you notice the gram of polythene wrapping on a cucumber.

A phone is an incredibly sophisticated device, but it's only a few ounces of stuff. It cost you $700, so it feels like it should involve a huge amount of natural resources to make. It required a lot of human skill and ingenuity, but we didn't need to burn a lot of stuff to make it. When you fill up your tank with $50 of unleaded, you don't think about the huge volume of pure hydrocarbons you're pouring into your car or the immensely energy-intensive processes needed to extract, refine and transport that fuel.

When you get on a plane, you don't think about the fact that almost the entire volume of the wings are filled with fuel that'll be burned in a single journey. When your heating thermostat clicks on, you don't think about the volume of gas rushing through a network of pipes to feed your boiler.

Re: The environmental impact of technology devices is getting worse

#55

Post by craftyguy »

rb808 wrote: post #34
sliken wrote: post #5

Seems like the easiest fix would be to mandate the same charging cable for all phones (no dongles) and user replaceable batteries that require no tools to change. With those two simple tweaks it would be much easier to keep a phone for 3 or more years. My google pixel seems like it could easily last for many years with it's quad core, 128GB storage, 4GB ram, and 2560x1440 display. Lets be honest, for most uses that's…

Pixel phones are end of life already. They were only guaranteed android updates for two years after 2016. This is another problem we have to overcome. https://support.google.com/pixelphone/answer/4457705?hl=en I have a 6p. It works great after a battery replacement, but Android P wont run on it.

> They were only guaranteed android updates for two years after 2016

Not exactly. The 2 years is for OS upgrades. They will continue to receive security updates which, IMHO are way more important, for another year. A 3 year lifecycle is still not great though.

Re: The environmental impact of technology devices is getting worse

#56

Post by craftyguy »

jdietrich wrote: post #36
paulintrognon wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But manufacturing a smartphone involves a lot of transportation and electricity, doesn't it? Our focus should also be on cutting energy spendings & reducing transportation, and stop buying new phones (and laptops and tvs etc..) every now and then sure will help, will it not?

The greatest myth in sustainable energy policy is "every little helps". We get caught up on visible but irrelevant things, while ignoring massive systemic problems. Apple publish high-quality, audited environmental impact reports for all their products. A 64gb iPhone 8 produces the equivalent of 57kg of CO2 across the entire product lifespan, from manufacturing to recycling. A return flight from LAX to JFK produces ~…

Like most problems, the 'solution' to reducing CO2 emmissions is made up of a bunch of smaller changes, and will not be one large 'fix'. I see no harm in chipping away at even the smallest of gains, provided we continue/push changes at all levels. Even 57kg * millions of devices over 18 months (average lifetime of a phone) is still a substantial amount of CO2 being released, even if it is dwarfed by other sources.

Re: The environmental impact of technology devices is getting worse

#57

Post by brolover »

exodust wrote: post #29
brolover wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. The amount of energy spent on heating and cooling is huge. Then it's transportation and agriculture. Then somewhere far behind is the whole Internet and efficient electronic devices. I use the same argument when it comes to bitcoin. That stuff is so tiny in our profiler. Sane thing to do is to optimize the slowest functions.

> efficient electronic devices When hardware has a two year average life cycle, the environment is not benefiting from any of the hardware's efficient characteristics. You seem happy with your new phone though, I guess that's the main thing.

I'm using xperia mini st15i, personally optimized ROM. Yet still, no industry comes no where close to heating and cooling.

Let's optimize the slowest functions not tiny percentages.

Re: The environmental impact of technology devices is getting worse

#58

Post by dapreja »

Arkanosis wrote: post #12
sliken wrote: post #5

Seems like the easiest fix would be to mandate the same charging cable for all phones (no dongles) and user replaceable batteries that require no tools to change. With those two simple tweaks it would be much easier to keep a phone for 3 or more years. My google pixel seems like it could easily last for many years with it's quad core, 128GB storage, 4GB ram, and 2560x1440 display. Lets be honest, for most uses that's…

Also mandate upgradable software. I feel that outdated software becomes an issue way before dead batteries for most phones on the market. Most vendors don't seem to care much about software upgrades, especially on the lower end, and not all devices are supported by LineageOS / postmarketOS and co. I'm not even talking about (ok, technically, I am) how hard and scary it is to install alternative firmware on smartphone…

To be fair the android rooting community is usually transperent. It's perspective of "scary" shouldnt be compared to jail breaking an iphone to get free apps. Also, most tutorial for rooting or just flashing firmware it's alwqys adviced to backup data, so fear of loss should be manegable.... one more thing, if you've reached the point of needing to root/change device software, do you really believe the company cares about your warrenty. I've known people with apple care go get their 5 year old mac books for battery replacement, to then get their time wasted with a lazy response of "sorry we don't covery water damage". When for a fact that device never experienced it.

Re: The environmental impact of technology devices is getting worse

#59

Post by seattle_spring »

rb808 wrote: post #34
sliken wrote: post #5

Seems like the easiest fix would be to mandate the same charging cable for all phones (no dongles) and user replaceable batteries that require no tools to change. With those two simple tweaks it would be much easier to keep a phone for 3 or more years. My google pixel seems like it could easily last for many years with it's quad core, 128GB storage, 4GB ram, and 2560x1440 display. Lets be honest, for most uses that's…

Pixel phones are end of life already. They were only guaranteed android updates for two years after 2016. This is another problem we have to overcome. https://support.google.com/pixelphone/answer/4457705?hl=en I have a 6p. It works great after a battery replacement, but Android P wont run on it.

Pixel was released in October 2016, so it hasn't been 2 years yet.

Re: The environmental impact of technology devices is getting worse

#60

Post by AstralStorm »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #51
the_gastropod wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You changing your diet will not have that big of an impact, you're right. Just like your vote won't sway an election. In aggregate, these things matter. In the U.S., over 9% [1] of the population follows a vegetarian/vegan diet. That absolutely has an impact on how much beef/chicken/pork is produced. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vegetarianism_by_country#Unite...

Not in the short term - again, the lead time of beef is years. And so on.

Lead time for climate change has been years too. Unfortunately almost nobody cared.
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