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

Podswap: Keep airpods alive and out of the landfill

thepodswap.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 191 posts

Re: Podswap: Keep airpods alive and out of the landfill

#51

Post by samatman »

an_opabinia wrote: post #36
samatman wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's just the Discourse in action. For whatever reason, AirPods, of all things, have become a go-to example of environmental waste and throwaway culture. It's bizarre to me. I'm fairly confident that for minutes of pleasure / embodied energy, AirPods score higher than almost anything else I own, certainly among things with a battery and chip. They also last multiples of the time I would get out of wired earphones, wh…

> last multiples of the time I would get out of wired earphones, which always die in a few months from work-hardening the copper wires until they break Hmm... > It's just the Discourse in action... I'm fairly confident that for minutes of pleasure / embodied energy, AirPods score higher than almost anything else I own, certainly among things with a battery and chip It's interesting to reduce environmentalism to "joy…

You misread me, my case was joy * time / embodied energy.

How else should we justify the use of energy except through such means? Subjectively I mean, I wouldn't suggest actually quantifying it.

I don't burn energy in the winter because I like to spend money, I do it because there's an interior temperature below which I'm miserable. Once I've achieved that homeostasis, the only think left to me is to do it with as little energy as possible.

> AirPods are shitty in their own unique way

That's just like, your opinion, man.

Speaking of intellectual dishonesty, I will never reply to you again.

Re: Podswap: Keep airpods alive and out of the landfill

#52

Post by dehrmann »

TaylorAlexander wrote: post #38
samatman wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's just the Discourse in action. For whatever reason, AirPods, of all things, have become a go-to example of environmental waste and throwaway culture. It's bizarre to me. I'm fairly confident that for minutes of pleasure / embodied energy, AirPods score higher than almost anything else I own, certainly among things with a battery and chip. They also last multiples of the time I would get out of wired earphones, wh…

This seems way too conveniently dismissive of the environmental issue. Apple is the 800 lb gorilla that sets industry expectations. They have been gluing batteries and making repair difficult across their product line for a decade. This leads to higher consumer costs and manufactured goods filling landfills prematurely. As one of the most visible companies in the world making repair difficult, the criticism is well-d…

> This leads to higher consumer costs and manufactured goods filling landfills prematurely.

Citation needed. Apple claims, and I'm fine with taking it with a grain of salt, that because batteries aren't replaceable like old Nokia phones, they can make the battery larger, possibly reducing consumer costs and how often batteries are changed. It's not just Apple, either. Consumers seem to not care.

Re: Podswap: Keep airpods alive and out of the landfill

#53

Post by internet2000 »

lights0123 wrote: post #46
reaperducer wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's what this company does, too.

No, they actually open them up and swap the battery and resell, i.e. refurbishing. Apple just throws them away.

Are we sure Apple just throws them away?

Re: Podswap: Keep airpods alive and out of the landfill

#54

Post by jrowen »

qeternity wrote: post #23
ashayh wrote: post #8

Why do we need a separate business for this? Apple should be made to pay for it. If anyone finds an Airpod on the street or in trash/landfills, they should be able to take it to the nearest Apple store or mail it and get 20-40$ back for it. This should be the law for _all_ and any products, not just electronics. Large corporations have cleverly shifted the responsibility of recycling on the consumer, while they get t…

You can’t just claim that they’ve shifted responsibility without arguing your point. It’s clear you have an axe to grind, but at the same time, where do we draw the line of individual responsibility? It’s not like we haven’t known for decades we were killing the planet…and yet here we all are. Why does the average Joe get off the hook here?

IMO, we draw the line based on effectiveness, not idealized morality. What's going to be easier: a never-ending campaign of trying to educate and motivate millions of different average Joes to properly recycle [some item], or simply legally preventing those items from being created by a few centralized sources (or requiring them to take responsibility in some other way)?

Same thing with with 2008 sub-prime mortgage crisis. A lot of people will say "well they shouldn't have taken those loans." Yes, true, but it would have been much easier if they were never allowed to be offered in the first place. Some people are against the "save the people from themselves" mentality, but it really seems to be a lot more effective and there's not a strong argument for allowing practices that are likely to result in average Joes taking deleterious actions.

Re: Podswap: Keep airpods alive and out of the landfill

#55

Post by tbrock »

denimnerd42 wrote: post #6
Etheryte wrote: post #2

As someone who gets a ridiculous amount of use out of their pods, I really hope this business pans out. I think the product is great, but batteries are consumable products. In fact, I would hope that one day it would be mandatory to offer battery replacements for all products you sell. (Do correct me if I'm wrong, I don't think Apple currently does this for pods?)

what's frustrating is that while batteries are consumable products they could last much longer if they stay between 80 and 20% capacity without overheating. (this is similar to what tesla does) I wish there was a "battery care" settings on all electronics that would respect limits like this so that I could get thousands of cycles out of my devices instead of only Apple has added a feature which tries to do this intel…

Apple is the only laptop manufacturer that even gets close to 1000 cycles of great battery life.

Re: Podswap: Keep airpods alive and out of the landfill

#56

Post by fshbbdssbbgdd »

qeternity wrote: post #23
ashayh wrote: post #8

Why do we need a separate business for this? Apple should be made to pay for it. If anyone finds an Airpod on the street or in trash/landfills, they should be able to take it to the nearest Apple store or mail it and get 20-40$ back for it. This should be the law for _all_ and any products, not just electronics. Large corporations have cleverly shifted the responsibility of recycling on the consumer, while they get t…

You can’t just claim that they’ve shifted responsibility without arguing your point. It’s clear you have an axe to grind, but at the same time, where do we draw the line of individual responsibility? It’s not like we haven’t known for decades we were killing the planet…and yet here we all are. Why does the average Joe get off the hook here?

The average Joe has known for decades and the problem continues. Ergo, we can’t rely on individual action to solve it. We need society-scale solutions. Corporate action is the only tool civilization has for this.

Re: Podswap: Keep airpods alive and out of the landfill

#57

Post by crazygringo »

bruceb wrote: post #3

I am pro refurbishing/reusing and having less waste but its hard to care about tiny airpods being tossed. Maybe they test the message and it resonated better than "Airpods should last longer than your last relationship" or "1 trick that Apple hates" etc.

Seriously, I never understand the "environmental waste" argument as applied to AirPods.

The pair of buds weighs a third of a single disposable AA battery. There's less plastic than in an average Chinese takeout container.

If you want to complain that they're expensive to replace then go ahead. But as soon as anyone brings up the environment, give me a break. We're not talking about a 65" television that weight 55 pounds, c'mon. Each bud is four grams of mass.

If people threw out twenty pairs of AirPods a day, then sure let's worry about the environmental issue. But when they replace one pair every two to three years? I don't think so.

Re: Podswap: Keep airpods alive and out of the landfill

#58

Post by easton »

reaperducer wrote: post #29
seriousquestion wrote: post #10

I've heard, anecdotally, of people losing their airpods often. I haven't yet, but curious how common that problem is?

I've heard, anecdotally, of people losing their airpods often. I haven't yet, but curious how common that problem is? It must be a thing, since Apple lets you use your devices to find your missing AirPods, and they are even part of the FindMe network. I've sometimes wondered how many AirPods have been flushed down toilets around the world. Even if only .001% of AirPods meet their demise this way, considering the numb…

The Find My network stuff isn’t coming until the fall. Right now they only update their location when connected to your phone, which is basically useless.

Re: Podswap: Keep airpods alive and out of the landfill

#59

Post by KingMachiavelli »

reaperducer wrote: post #33
KingMachiavelli wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Generic electronics recycling is very expensive. I had to recycle an old 55" rear projection TV and it cost $150. Good luck getting the average person to pay that instead of disposing of it (illegally). It would be more efficient and cheaper for companies to create a recycling process and include that in the purchase price.

Generic electronics recycling is very expensive. I had to recycle an old 55" rear projection TV and it cost $150. Good luck getting the average person to pay that instead of disposing of it (illegally). Blame your municipality. When I lived in the southwest, the city required the trash companies to pick up or recycle EVERYTHING for free. From old paint to batteries to giant tube TVs to washing machines. Everything, o…

That just moves the cost of recycling to the public. The public shouldn't have to bear the costs of the negative externality of other people's consumption. It is also essentially a regressive tax since the wealthy consume/dispose of more goods. Also most areas don't have a single exclusive trash service (monopoly).

Furthermore, single stream recycling in America, on average, is a complete failure. The portion of stuff that is actually recycled is very low as much is contaminated with non-recyclable materials. I'd either expect such a trash/recycling service (as you describe) to be quite expensive or actually recycle very little of relative to what could be recycled.

If the manufacture's & end consumers of goods were forced to confront the cost of disposal at the time of purchase it would create a large incentive for companies to make products with less waste and products that are easier to recycle. The goal isn't to just to recycle everything that currently can be recycled but to make everything easy to recycle.

Re: Podswap: Keep airpods alive and out of the landfill

#60

Post by [deleted] »

samatman wrote: post #14
bruceb wrote: post #3

I am pro refurbishing/reusing and having less waste but its hard to care about tiny airpods being tossed. Maybe they test the message and it resonated better than "Airpods should last longer than your last relationship" or "1 trick that Apple hates" etc.

It's just the Discourse in action. For whatever reason, AirPods, of all things, have become a go-to example of environmental waste and throwaway culture. It's bizarre to me. I'm fairly confident that for minutes of pleasure / embodied energy, AirPods score higher than almost anything else I own, certainly among things with a battery and chip. They also last multiples of the time I would get out of wired earphones, wh…

[deleted]
Post reply on HN