
Samsung to Replace Plastic Packaging with Sustainable Materials - xbmcuser
https://news.samsung.com/global/samsung-electronics-to-replace-plastic-packaging-with-sustainable-materials
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xbmcuser
Most of us might dismiss it as marketing speak but I do think most consumer
good manufacturers should do the same especially for 1 time use packaging for
electronics

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dmos62
I agree, but the most wasteful packaging is for food. I throw out small
amounts of electronics packaging a few times in a few years. I throw out heaps
of food packaging every week.

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pixl97
Catch 22 situation. Many plastic wrapped objects last longer than paper/non
wrapped objects leading to less waste at the store.

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toomuchtodo
Bioplastics would be a suitable replacement, and if properly incentivized,
local municipalities could collect it in a separated waste stream for
conversion to energy (which would contribute towards offsetting the collection
cost).

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cannonedhamster
With China no longer accepting dirty recyclables from the US which are
terribly hard to process we're probably on our way back to multi-stream
recycling. Sad fact is that apparently the recycling truck is one of the worst
causes of contamination when it compacts otherwise good recyclables. It's a
bit more effort and a significantly higher rate of trash versus recycling, but
in the end I think it would be worth it. Your idea has merit as well, though
last I knew bioplastics still had some problems to solve in order to replace
standard plastics, still worth pursuing.

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newprint
And on top of that, remove most of the paper manuals that come with the
phones. They can be put as .pdf files, right on the phones.

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Jonnax
I'm under the impression that sustainable paper isn't that bad on the
environment.

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magicalhippo
But the manuals adds weight and bulk, which contributes to CO2 when shipped.

I agree tho. My mom just got her first smart phone, a Samsung S8+. She's 72
years old, she'll figure it out but not thanks to that tiny booklet that came
with the phone. If she needed the manual, I'd have to print it out on A4 paper
or something anyway.

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thfuran
>But the manuals adds weight and bulk, which contributes to CO2 when shipped.

I suspect that that is a rounding error next to the manufacture of the phone
itself.

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magicalhippo
For fun I ran some ballpark figures, a 30 gram manual, 1 billion smartphones,
primary shipping by sea, and it's on the order of 5000-10000 metric tons of
CO2 to ship the manuals.

Sure, the "CO2 budget" is measured in gigatons so not a huge dent. But add up
a lot of these rounding errors and it might actually make a slight difference.
And since the climate interactions are non-linear, slight differences can have
a large effect over time.

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benj111
At first I was impressed by 30 billion grams (with little finger to mouth)

But that's only 30,000 tonnes.

10,000 tonnes of co2 for 30,000 tonnes of cargo seems... Wrong.

This seems to back me up [https://timeforchange.org/co2-emissions-shipping-
goods](https://timeforchange.org/co2-emissions-shipping-goods)

10 - 40g co2 per tonne. So about an order of magnitude less.

Edit: Doh see below. This is per km

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magicalhippo
I used the same page :)

The key is it's per ton per km transported.

For reference, Shanghai to Rotterdam route (a bit of a worst case I guess) is
just shy of 20000 km[1].

[1]: [https://sea-distances.org/](https://sea-distances.org/)

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benj111
You're right (sorry) wow so worst case 800kg of co2 / tonne. And that's
excluding the return journey which is typically empty. So could well be 1:1!

Airfreight is 500g /tonne/km so 10 tonnes of co2 / tonne of freight.

Guess that's why co2 calculators always ask about flying.

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magicalhippo
I missed the per km at first as well.

Air freight is not clean indeed. Which leads to a kind of ironic situation
here in Norway. Salmon export is hailed as one of the primary income sources
once the oil is gone, yet significant portion of the salmon is exported via
air to Asian markets. Not exactly a very green change...

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cannonedhamster
Coudn't that be mitigated with factory ships that produce the product en route
and drop off at the end location? Ship to ship transfer is easily possible.
I'm honestly asking as I don't know the true logistics behind this, but I
thought factory ships already existed and did this.

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herogreen
Marketing speak. The real thing they should do is committing for repairable
phones (easy) and more importantly update-able phones (hard). So that users do
not have to replace a perfectly working phone because they fear for their
security.

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IfOnlyYouKnew
Smoking and getting regular exercise is still better than just smoking.

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exergy
Or, as Stephen Schneider said when asked about Cap and Trade (in lieu of
Carbon Taxes): Don't let the perfect get in the way of the good.

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pmlnr
Can we force supermarkets to do the same somehow?

I'm pretty certain individually wrapped vegetables are causing more trouble,
than phone packaging.

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svendbt
The news response from supermarket chains where I live is that individually
packaged fruit and vegetables helps reduce supply chain food waste.

Makes sense (e.g. one squashed tomato during transport will only waste one
package) - no idea if it is true though.

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pmlnr
Then put them in paper cradles, like we do with eggs.

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pixl97
Consumers wont buy it _if_ plastic wrapped options are allowed. Clear plastic
allows transparency into the object that is being purchased while at the same
protecting from external contamination. For example a clear plastic egg carton
allows you to see if any eggs are broken without risking getting egg goo on
you.

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simongr3dal
You can look on the underside of the egg carton to see if any of them are wet
from broken egg leaking into it, or open the carton and gently lift each egg
to see if they stick.

But I do agree that humans are pretty likely to take the easy choice here,
which is why we need to take those choices away so we can more easily make the
better choices.

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black-tea
We shouldn't be getting through so much electronics to make this a problem.
This isn't getting to the root of the problem.

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skookumchuck
This is a great initiative.

I've emailed Amazon about stopping using plastic bubblewrap mailers, and use
cardboard ones instead. No reply :-(

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api
Samsung should make a laptop. Make it with as open as possible hardware and
target the pro market. Offer a choice of Windows or no OS, and for Windows
make it that no ads enterprise LTS version. Price it accordingly. They have
the experience and supply chain to absolutely nail it. Bonus for an oled
screen but large oleds might still be a bit tough.

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pmlnr
Samsung and open hardware? OS choice? Sure. Besides, the already do a lot of
laptops. They even had a promising business line -
[https://notebooks.com/2011/03/18/samsung-introduces-
series-2...](https://notebooks.com/2011/03/18/samsung-introduces-
series-2-4-and-6-business-notebooks-details-specs/) \- , which vanished.

Unfortunetely they never were, and probably never will be dev friendly.

