
The environmental impact of technology devices is getting worse - signa11
https://www.fastcodesign.com/90165365/smartphones-are-wrecking-the-planet-faster-than-anyone-expected
======
sliken
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 plenty for many years to come.

But already the battery is not as good as it was new and it's only going to
get worse.

~~~
Arkanosis
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 I feel that outdated software becomes an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 smartphones: unsupported rooting process that can
brick your device, loss of your data while rooting, unsigned binaries
distributed by unknown third-parties, broken warranty by using unsupported
firmware… Vendors should be forced to sell either hardware that can be used
with third-party software, or harware and software that is guaranteed to be
updated for more than “up until the next shinny new device is out”.

~~~
dapreja
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.

~~~
Arkanosis
If you want to get software updates (and you /do/ want it, even if you don't
know, because of critical security fixes), you reach the point of needing to
change the device software in only a few years (see, even Google's own Nexus
line has a laughable software support duration:
[https://support.google.com/nexus/answer/4457705#nexus_device...](https://support.google.com/nexus/answer/4457705#nexus_devices)).
In the lower end, it frequently happens before the end of the legal warranty
in some countries (eg. 2 years in France), especially with discontinued
devices sold during sales. Worse, there's a frightening number of phones sold
on Amazon that run an /already/ unsupported version of Android with known
security issues.

Then, when you have the chance to have a device supported by some third party,
you discover that you can't do backups without having to appeal to some
wizardry with ADB and your phone in “developer mode” (when you even have that
option), because you can't otherwise do proper backups without having rooted
your phone /before/ having data to back up in the first place (ie. thus
voiding your warranty from day one).

------
samcheng
The math is pretty poor in this article. Information and Communication Tech
represents only 3% of global carbon emissions, and most of that is from giant
server farms.

This other article states that the embodied CO2 in a cellphone is roughly
equivalent to 1kg of beef. That's like three steaks.

[https://www.theguardian.com/environment/green-living-
blog/20...](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/green-living-
blog/2010/jun/09/carbon-footprint-mobile-phone)

The bigger emissions problems around electricity generation and transportation
are where we should be focusing our attention.

~~~
paulintrognon
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?

~~~
jdietrich
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 ~580kg of CO2; the climate impact is
equivalent to ~1100kg of CO2, because emissions at altitude have a greater
warming effect.

Driving 10,000 miles in a typical sedan or crossover SUV emits about 3000kg of
CO2; in a large pickup like a Ford F150, that figure is closer to 4500kg.

The food consumption of the average US household results in equivalent CO2
emissions of 8100kg.

Our carbon emissions are dominated by heating and cooling, transport and food.
Keeping your phone for another couple of years is a rounding error in the
scheme of things - it's equivalent to a two-hour car journey or a good
restaurant meal. If we are to stand any chance of limiting the impact of
climate change, we need to make big, difficult choices about our lifestyle.

We need to massively reduce the amount we drive and fly. We need to redesign
homes to require less active heating and cooling. We need far more sustainable
electricity generation. We need to radically alter our diets and our approach
to agriculture, with far less meat and dairy consumption. This will be
difficult, expensive and politically unpopular, but it's the only way we'll
make a meaningful impact.

[https://images.apple.com/environment/pdf/products/iphone/iPh...](https://images.apple.com/environment/pdf/products/iphone/iPhone_8_PER_sept2017.pdf)

[https://calculator.carbonfootprint.com/calculator.aspx?tab=3](https://calculator.carbonfootprint.com/calculator.aspx?tab=3)

[http://css.umich.edu/factsheets/carbon-footprint-
factsheet](http://css.umich.edu/factsheets/carbon-footprint-factsheet)

[https://www.withouthotair.com/](https://www.withouthotair.com/)

~~~
paulintrognon
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
manufacturing phones on a large scale is very optimized, but it seems
impossible to me that manufacturing a phone in China from components from all
over the world emits less that a good big steak in a restaurant... I that's
true, that's incredible.

~~~
jdietrich
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.

------
swerner
I wish I could use my phones longer than I already do. Unfortunately, the lack
of software updates for older hardware turns that into a security risk as even
critical issues are no longer getting fixed.

Likewise, the 'modern' web breaks things left and right. The heavy use of
JavaScript for trackers etc makes it impossible to read even simple news web
sites on an old iPad, even though the actual content is just static text. With
Discourse and similar platforms gaining popularity, I'm getting locked out
from more parts of the web unless I have up to date hardware. I don't
understand why web forums became such complex beasts that a device capable of
streaming video, realtime sound synthesis and 3D gaming is not sufficient to
display what is essentially just text and some images.

HN is a positive exception, I sincerely hope it remains that way.

~~~
jimmy1
Where is the disconnect I wonder? Your old iPad I am sure runs software that
is many more times more complex, more lines of code, and more intense than the
ad tracking software on a browser. Will web assembly help here?

~~~
swerner
Unless Apple surprises us with an iOS 5 update that includes a browser with
web assembly - no, it won't help.

Either way, simply going to spiegel.de crashes (!) Safari in a 1st gen iPad.
The Washington Post web page also would constantly get reloaded in my iPhone
4S.

~~~
jimmy1
Sounds like it may be due to Safari purposefully limiting the memory and
processing resources available to a browser tab, no?

------
throw7
Two things not mentioned:

1\. OS support (android at least) isn't that long. I suppose security patches
are more important and might be worth fighting for somehow (extended security
patch plans?).

2\. i sometimes hear how repair shops have a hard time sourcing oem parts
(having to go to chinese frankenparts which may be confiscated at the border).
this should not be an issue and should work just like the car industry.

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Lafcadio
I would love to be able to just buy a new phone battery and keep mw phone
going longer. But I do not want to have to go through a complex taking apart
process that may result in destroying it.

~~~
simonh
Plenty of manufacturers offer battery upgrade programmes, the one form Apple
is even reasonably affordable these days. Plus there are third party upgraders
that will do it for you for popular models. You do need to bear this
requirement in mind when buying though.

~~~
exodust
Phone manufacturers should be forced to provide free battery replacement on
all their phones. Otherwise they should make it a simple process for consumers
to swap the battery out.

I still have a Samsung S5 phone with removable battery, had it for years. I
don't know if there's phones on the market with replaceable batteries, I have
not bothered looking for a new phone.

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gnode
I wonder to what extent modern electronics, particularly display technologies
as mentioned in the article, are dependent by necessity on rare earth metals,
and couldn't be replaced with other chemicals.

A change I can imagine in the future is towards organic chemicals such as in
OLED displays. Although I'm aware that many of those used today are
organometalics, and I have no idea what the actual metal resource impact is.

------
strken
Maybe a refund for consumers plus a collection fee for institutions would be
an incentive to recycle, for both individuals and businesses. Your phone
breaks, you take it to the supermarket, they give you $10, they send in the
IMEI or some other unique code and get $12 in return.

~~~
mehrdadn
Recycling just isn't a substitute; it's far less effective. You're supposed to
reduce, reuse, and _then_ , if neither is possible, recycle... in that order.

~~~
icebraining
Recycling a phone can mean reusing many of its components for repairing other
phones (as part of the fourth R: refurbishing).

~~~
adrianN
In reality recycling a phone means shipping it to some poor country where it
is burned in an open fire to recover some of the metals.

[https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/burning-
truth-...](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/burning-truth-behind-
e-waste-dump-africa-180957597/)

~~~
icebraining
From your link: _" 85 percent of the e-waste dumped in Ghana and other parts
of West Africa is produced in Ghana and West Africa. (...) In other words,
Agbogbloshie is not a global dumping ground. Like most places on Earth, it’s
struggling to deal with what it generates on its own."_

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jlebrech
the planet != the environment.

the planet will survive, it will just suffocate us and some other life will
take over.

~~~
Vinnl
Luckily everybody reading this article will still understand that the article
is being alarming about the effect on us as a species and not about the actual
existence of the planet on its own.

~~~
jlebrech
it's just a euphemism for our own existence.

