Technology has reached a point where it’s solving problems you never knew you had. It seems like just yesterday when you’d watch somebody in a James Bond movie opening a door with a retina or fingerprint scan – when today pretty basic laptops and phones have that exact function.
With such advanced technology available so easily, it’s easy not to think about the wider impact of our consumption of it. But getting a new smartphone could have as big an impact on the environment as driving around in a fuel-guzzling SUV. Manufacturing a new laptop emits 225,000 grams of carbon dioxide. A Porsche 911 would have to cover slightly more than 1000kms before it produced that much CO2.
From September 2013 to July, a total of 102,915 kgs of electronic waste was collected from the Wellington City Council’s Recycling Centre at the Southern Landfill. That’s the equivalent weight of about 52,000 laptops or 918,884 iPhones. Photo: Unknown
The Ministry for Environment has only recently begun taking measures to quantify the problem of electronic waste. In May it released a discussion document on the prospect of government intervention with regards to disposal of electrical and electronic equipment, tyres, agrichemicals and farm plastics, and synthetic greenhouse gases and refrigerants. In other words, it’s an acknowledgement that e-waste can no longer be grouped with simple household garbage.
From September 2013 to July, a total of 102,915 kgs of electronic waste was collected from the Wellington City Council’s Recycling Centre at the Southern Landfill. That’s the equivalent weight of about 52,000 laptops or 918,884 iPhones in one year, in Wellington alone. On such a scale, recycling can only ever be part of the solution.
Consumers who upgrade their devices every time a new version hits the shelves are often held responsible, but manufacturers’ designing gadgets that are easier to throw out than they are to repair. Most smartphones come with sealed batteries, glued-together parts and non-expandable memory – partly to protect the consumer from the potential risks of tinkering with live parts, and partly due to the ongoing quest for leaner, slimmer aesthetics and lower production costs.
But the upshot is, if your year-old smartphone doesn’t hold charge like it once did, or if 16GB of storage is no longer enough, you can’t just replace the battery or put in a new memory card. You could send in your phone to an authorised service centre for a battery replacement, but with the time, cost and effort that would involve, why wouldn’t you just get a new phone?
David Hill, vice-president of Lenovo corporate identity and design, is an industry vetaran, holding more than 50 patents on design innovation. He’s in charge of designing the Thinkpad brand of laptops that were first sold by IBM in 1992. The first models were expensive but durable and built to last – plus they came with design and service manuals that spelled out step-by-step tasks like replacing the battery, upgrading RAM and replacing the hard drive. But the latest ThinkPad X1 is the first-ever in the range to feature sealed batteries and RAM that’s soldered.
The holy grail of notebooks would be an ultra-light, ultra thin, 24-hour battery, with upgradeable components, full-size keyboard and multiple connection ports. I guess I have some work to do.
“The disadvantages of sealed units are fairly obvious – there is no upgrade path – but the benefits in terms of cost to the end user, ease of use and the fact that the majority of customers never open or upgrade their system far outweigh the disadvantages,” says Hill.
Along with battery life, weight is the main driver in consumer electronics, and that requires thinner components. Users are unlikely to be prepared to pay more and wait longer for machines that are tailored to their individual requirements, if that were even a financial or logistical possibility – and as such, some comrpomises have to be made, he says.
“The holy grail of notebooks would be an ultra-light, ultra thin, 24-hour battery, with upgradeable components, full-size keyboard and multiple connection ports,” he says. “I guess I have some work to do.”
But Lenovo still offers other laptops with user-replaceable components. Apple products use Pentalobular security screws, which have five points as opposed to the standard four and as such can only be opened with a specific screwdriver. If that weren’t enough, each device uses Pentalobular screws in a range of sizes – so even one of those specific screwdrivers wouldn’t fit them all.
The Computer Shop in the Wellington suburb of Newtown is in the minority of such businesses in that it still offers custom-built desktop PCs. “When people come in they ask me how long their desktop will last, I tell them I provide a three-year-warranty,” says manager Muhammad Mustafa Khan. “They hear that, pause and ask ‘Oh, so I can’t replace it next year?’”
WATCH Muhammad Mustafa Khan of The Computer Shop.
As recently as 2007, Mustafa says people seemed to prefer repairing their devices to replacing them outright – but in the past couple of years, laptops are more readily written off. He says build quality for modern machines is poor, and that’s compounded by the fact that people don’t take care of them. “With laptops available for less than $1000, most people look at them as $80-a-month rental devices. You use it for a year and pay another $1000 for the next annual cycle of $80.”
But upgrading your device doesn’t have to mean disposing of it. Adam Lang of Connect NZ, a computer hardware company based in Mount Cook in Wellington, makes the point that computers are modular. “If you break a screen, it doesn’t mean you have to replace the laptop – just replace that module. But there’s been a cultural shift in the last 10 years. Having a laptop isn’t something special anymore, you’re expected to have one, so the level of care of those things decreases and that increases wear and tear and decreases life.”
WATCH Adam Lang talk about the implications of disposing of that tablet or phone.
But the fact remains that some devices just aren’t made with recycling or repairing in mind. iFixit, a “free repair manual” online that works to the maxim “Repair is Noble”, rates gadgets for the ease with which they are able to be repaired in protest of the current trend of ‘use and dispose’. In 2010, it scored the first-ever Apple iPad six out of ten, with points deducted for the hard-to-access battery; the latest iPad and iPad Air got just two out of ten, with the excessive adhesive on the battery and hidden screws complicating disassembly and making it tough to repair.
Its founder, Kyle Wiens, maintains that ‘recycling isn’t the answer; it’s the last resort.’ Considerable energy is wasted in recycling when that disposed off material could have been usable with repairs.
“For New Zealand,” Kyle says “there isn’t a lot of manufacturing that happens in the country. So manufacturing benefits someone else’s economy and not yours. But repairs are local. Building a sustainable economy needs to be a services-based economy that involves local people having the expertise of doing repairs. That’s how you build a structural, economic base for a country.”
And it’s not just a matter of hardware and design – rapid software updates render a working device unusable in a couple of years. If your phone still runs on Google’s ‘Gingerbread’ Android Operating System from 2011, the chances are it’s not coping well with new applications in 2014 – if it recognises them at all.
So manufacturing benefits someone else’s economy and not yours. But repairs are local.
Samsung Electronics senior engineer Raymond Kawakami, based in California, is a self-described “tinkerer” who provides advice and support in online forums in his spare time. He remembers first falling victim to what he terms “the upgrade cycle” with the purchase of a first-generation iPod touch. “Many of the newer apps won't run with the older iOS software and you can’t update it. Because I didn’t like being forced into an upgrade, I bought a used fourth-generation, instead of new – Apple was not going to get my money – but its battery life is now only a few hours. I'll probably end up trying to change it myself, given there's plenty of tutorials on the net.”
Kawakami makes the point that it’s not cost-effective to pay a tech to troubleshoot and repair an item that you could replace outright for about the same amount – and many people are teaching themselves the skills necessary to do it themselves.
Trevor James Sparks, 20, an applied computer graphics student at California State University, says a lot of his friends buy new laptops cheap – for about US$350 – and run them into the ground. “They run hot under abuse, screens get busted, keys pop out, mechanisms break or the motherboard shorts rendering them useless within a year.”
Trevor refurbishes old machines and sells them on, and says the difference between modern models and those that were built to last is obvious. “I like the older ones for their superior engineering and simple construction, making it easy for people to peel apart and change, modify and upgrade the insides.”
No matter your views of the current trend of ‘use and dispose’ – let alone your contribution to it – it’s striking that a student’s money-making endeavour gets more directly to the heart of an issue than the collective might of multi-national corporations. Not to mention our own misguided impressions of how we can protect our environment. Recycling e-waste is no silver bullet; first, we’ve got to reassess our own relationship to technology, and what we demand of it.
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