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Comment by ogre_codes | Hacker News Reader

I kind of wonder if we're looking at solving this the wrong way. Instead of mandating that manufacturers take specific steps to fix the waste problem, maybe it would be better to tag items at manufacture and charge device makers a percentage based on how long before it enters the waste stream.

Manufacturers could solve this by either:

- Making their things easy to repair

- Creating in house recycling programs

- Making equipment more durable and longer lasting

Any combination of the above. By picking one specific way of reducing waste, we are ignoring other factors. Few people care to repair Android phones because you can't upgrade the OS after 2 years regardless. It doesn't matter if the hardware is repairable, the device is greatly devalued at that point. Like wise, if it's super expensive to repair an iPhone, people aren't going to bother and will just replace it.

By focusing on the end result -> Devices entering the waste stream <- the manufacturers are responsible for ensuring hardware gets responsibly recycled, repaired, or just doesn't break. Obviously, to make this work the cost per device entering the stream would have to be significant compared to the cost of the device.

Also, the cost should be the responsibility of the maker. Currently in some place in the US, consumers pay the cost to dispose of/ recycle televisions. The result is we end up with TVs on the side of the road. Often on the way away from the dump where people refuse to pay the disposal fee then toss the TV out the door on the way home.

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> 1) Making their things easy to repair. 2) Creating in house recycling programs. 3) Making equipment more durable and longer lasting

The first and third should not be on equal footing with the second. Reduce, Reuse, Recycle is meant to be applied in that order. Many environmental crimes can be hidden in a recycling program. Many products are not truly recyclable, but tell consumers they are. Sometimes they are only partially recyclable, or other times the recycling is technically possible but economically infeasible and consequently doesn't actually happen. Corporations know this and have promoted recycling to equal footing as reuse and reduction. They would rather people consume more and casually throw broken products into their recycling bin, naively believing they're being responsible consumers.

> Many environmental crimes can be hidden in a recycling program.

Yep

But by the same token, many materials in consumer electronics are mined unethically and/ or end up causing toxic pollution. If companies can effectively recycle these products without, a great amount of environmental (and human) damage can be avoided.

I would argue that having a responsible battery reclamation process is more important that having questionably repairable devices.

Also, while we're being cynical here. If we make a device "Repairable" that doesn't mean it's going to ever actually get repaired. If it doesn't make economic sense from the end user perspective, repairable products end up in the trash. This is particularly true in this world where manufacturers stop releasing software for old hardware. (Or worse, remotely brick old hardware)

Exactly. And the most impactful solution is also one incompatible with growth-based consumer economy: buy less stuff.

Recycling won't be an answer even if, through some miracle, everything would became fully recyclable in practice. The reason is that most materials cannot be recycled indefinitely - they degrade. On top of that, turning trash into input material usually consumes some non-recoverable matter (e.g. chemicals to clean and process it). Then there's production waste that isn't recoverable too. All of this adds up into continuous churn.

So with recycling, instead of a Mine->Manufacture->Use->Trash pipeline, you have... Mine->Manufacture->Use->Trash pipeline where a fraction of matter makes a cycle from Trash to Manufacture. Two perhaps not immediately obvious facts: one, that fraction of matter that gets recycled becomes a fraction of a fraction on its next cycle - which is a series that converges to 0. Two, none of this matters as long the pipeline itself is going through exponential growth. You may slow it a little, but it's still exponential.

Isn't it sad that right to repair needs to be framed this way?

I mean, it's fine to look after the environment.

But...

It seems impossible to ask for individual rights. This is after all an individual right. My right to repair something that I paid for.

But...

It's presented as a collective benefit, the abstract save the planet thing.

We're nothing important unless we're a part of the collective. Or even worse, some abstract idea like the purity of our Precious Bodily Fluids. I'll go to sleep now.

Why not push it on both fronts simultaneously? Right to repair has strong benefits for both individual freedoms and the environment.

Indeed, but you see, individual freedoms is not enough anymore.

Two is better than one, isn't it?

Also, individual freedoms aren't the be-all and end-all. We're lucky that they align with environmental concerns in this case.

Additionally, right to repair isn't really about individual freedoms. Most people aren't going to fix products that require complex repairs. The right to repair is, first and foremost, about allowing people to exercise that right through delegation to specialists. Unencumbered repairability allows for local markets of repair shops to form, that can offer repairs at reasonable price points.

>The first and third should not be on equal footing with the second.

What?

>> 1) Making their things easy to repair. 2) Creating in house recycling programs. 3) Making equipment more durable and longer lasting

I read as 1)Reuse 2)Recycle 3)Reduce.

The best thing a manufacturer could do is create a bomb proof smartphone that will be usable forever.

I think you and @stretchcat are saying the same thing. Ease-of-repair and durability are more important than recycling.

Yes exactly. Recycling is better than nothing in cases where reuse or reduction aren't possible (many medical products probably fall under this category.) But reduction and reuse are preferable where possible.

> The best thing a manufacturer could do is create a bomb proof smartphone that will be usable forever.

This is illogical. Smartphones become obsolete for technology reasons even if they're bomb proof and usable forever. So they need to recyclable (or components reusable) as the priority.

Old Nokias were built to last and still work.. but they're e-waste because they're obsolete for the purposes almost everyone needs a phone for. Maybe it'd be better if they'd be more recyclable instead of more robust?

Presumably for smartphones, 'reuse' would mean devices that get software updates for long enough they can go through 2 or 3 users.

I’ve broken far far more phones than I’ve had to replace because they became obsolete. If we came anywhere close to most phones lasting until they are outmoded we’d be doing good.

> broken far far more phones

Maybe just be more careful? 'Take reasonable care of your things' should possibly come between reduce, and reuse-recycle.

Such condescension in response to breaking a piece of glass you carry with you in your pocket all the time. It’s honestly offensive.

Its funny how people whom share my active lifestyle often have a similar problem, and lament how fragile phones are.

Most of my phones have been broken between my hip/thigh and a blunt object. Most recently when I slipped and fell on some moss while backpacking. But other incidences including (literally) running into wheelbarrow in the dark, getting knocked out of my hand by a cyclist, a metal water bottle in a vehicle flying and smashing my phone into my hip.

I don’t go out of my way to hurt myself, and am actually a careful, graceful person. I’ve never broken a camera in over 50k shutter pulls.

Honestly they seem plenty robust to me already - I’ve never had one break in any way and I never use a case and just keep it in my pocket for everything from daily use all the way up to tactical military exercises.

Every phone I’ve ever had has become reasonably obsolete though.

I think that’s the case for most people. That’s why recyclability is more important than excessive robustness.

How abotu you buy a case and screen protector?

I always use both. I live an active lifestyle.

> I’ve broken far far more phones than I’ve had to replace because they became obsolete.

This isn't just about smartphones. Table life cycles are much longer. Many of my phones and all of my tablets have outlasted the Android upgrade cycle.

Personally I don't see why it shouldn't be both (or better all three). A device that lasts long, is upgraded consistently, and the manufacturer recycles the components.

The problem here is with the time delay between manufacturing and the waste, especially as many manufacturers are abroad and short-lived.

It's feasible to enforce repairability conditions and documentation requirements before a device is sold, at the point of manufacture or import - if you're not compliant, you get excluded from the market.

It's not feasible to reliably and effectively enforce consequences for manufacturers years down the road, when it's plausible that the original overseas manufacturer and the importer/wholesale distributor both have shuttered their operations.

We can't wait and see how much waste will be generated from this device, we if we want to charge device makers a percentage based on how long before it enters the waste stream, this needs to be based on an up-front guesstimate - which IMHO is a subjective metric can't be reliable and just invites corruption and abuse.

> It's feasible to enforce repairability conditions and documentation requirements before a device is sold, at the point of manufacture or import - if you're not compliant, you get excluded from the market.

Yes.

Someone else pointed out just charging for waste at the time of manufacture/ import and that is an excellent way to resolve this.

Though companies which reclaim/ recycle old products should get credit for that effort as well.

In Germany, producers or importers of electric and electronic devices are already paying for collection and recycling or disposal. https://www.stiftung-ear.de/de/startseite

Didn't reduce the volume of the respective waste and didn't prolong lifetime of products in the slightest.

Making the producers responsible for the disposal might be the best way. I don't exactly know how it would be implemented but I'd like to see it for packaging too.

Local authorities should be able to collect up all Mcdonalds packaging and hand it back to them. Make them responsible for its disposal. Then they will be incentivised to reduce the amount of packaging that they produce.

> Local authorities should be able to collect up all Mcdonalds packaging and hand it back to them.

Absolutely!

It is far too easy to create disposable crap that ends up dumped all over the planet. I get so frustrated seeing garbage all over the place in natural places.

I do think its a lot easier to focus on the higher ticket items first.

You guys are forgetting another part of the chain, which can make decisions - consumers. If cost of throwing something away increases - may be that will make consumers choose something more reliable and serviceable. As if right now residential trash pickup service probably covers just the labor and machinery to get trash to the landfill

Sure but first there have to be products to choose from.

They tried that with televisions in California.

The result? Televisions are one of the most common forms of road trash now. Often on the way to/ from the dump. As soon as you charge someone to get rid of something, the temptation to just dump it on the side of the road increases.

At scale this ends up being a public health issue because if you disincentivize getting rid of rotting food people get sick.

Roads, or rivers. In rural areas of Poland, it's still common to find illegal trash dumps in the woods or by the streams; any ditch will do. And there goes everything, from biowaste to furniture and television sets.

Yeah. One of the places I ride has a few very conspicuous dumps of obvious construction trash and it is extremely irritating. In this case, it's a bunch of asphalt roofing... very heavy and likely expensive at the dump.

Its bad enough I almost think we should just eliminate all dump fees and charge everything upstream. If you charge for disposal at the time of sale, then you don't need to charge at the time of disposal. Then you remove the incentive to dump elsewhere.

And you incentivize the creators of the waste to minimise it.

More full spectrum surveillance and INSTANT FINE!1!!

Laws like this are basically doomed at the start because consumers have very little choice in the amount of garbage they produce. It just ends up being an extra cost on consumers while the companies actually producing the trash go unpunished. There are some discretionary purchases like cards, wrapping paper, gift bags, single-use plastic bags that might move the needle a little but the bulk of my trash is packaging for stuff I have no choice but to take on. I can't give it back, I can't bring reusable containers, recycling won't take it.

> Laws like this are basically doomed at the start because consumers have very little choice in the amount of garbage they produce

Yep; and even if it turns out that there are two companies who offer products in the same market place, one with a kilogram of useless packaging and the other without any, it doesn't mean that the packaging is a salient distinction. I can't decide "I want to buy an iPhone without useless packaging" and the choice "Should I buy an iPhone with packaging or a lowend Android phone without packaging" isn't actually a plausible decision.

Charging to dispose of waste is a bad idea. In my country they tried charging for non-separated waste. It just increased the number of illegal dumps and garbage disposed in the wrong container by a massive amount.

Some notes about how all this is handled in Switzerland:

1- electronics HW (HDD, TV, microSD-card, etc..) recycling costs are already embedded in the cost of any new stuff that is sold (there is a little bit of extra price to be paid when buying new HW, that in turn will cover the costs to recycle the old HW that is probably being replaced or that will be replaced in the future). People dump their old HW to collection centers for free, which is then partially recycled (current technology cannot yet recover all metals etc.. contained in HW).

2- Some specific trash (e.g. PET, metals, etc...) can be brought to recycling collection centers and dumped there for free, which is then recycled.

3- To "motivate" people to produce as less non-recyclable trash as possible and to get rid of recyclable stuff in the right way (points #1 & #2), anything that gets into the non-recyclable trash must be paid for - e.g. we have to pay ~2 USD for a 35-liters trash bag, big objects need a special "sticker" that must be bought (don't remember how much it costs) => normal trash bags and big stuff without sticker don't get collected, so you cannot just leave them on the street.

In general, during the last years this put quite some pressure as well on the retailers (meaning the final shops from which you buy stuff): in the past they used e.g. the many small chunks of polystyrene ( https://www.vertapak.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/polyst... ) to cushion what was in their packages, but now they all almost always use small inflatable bags - in both cases still plastic, but the amount of material is like 1000 times lower. They did it because many people continuously complained a bit to them that on one hand polystyrene wasn't environmental, but as well or especially because they had to use a lot of space in the "special costly trash bag" to throw that stuff away.

I admit that I'm not the best recycler (PET+HW+batteries+lightbulbs+clothes always, but rarely stuff like metal and glass and paper), but in the end I think that I'm at least "ok".

Switzerland doesn't have a nation-wide law about it, and if I want I can still throw away stuff into the non-recyclable loop, but if I do it then I have to pay for it (by buying the special trash bag or sticker) as I usually do when I throw away cans and bottles mixed with other stuff => freedom, but at a price - that sentence does sound horrible but in this context of recycling it just makes sense, and for me it works absolutely well :)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waste_management_in_Switzerlan...

Does Switzerland have any problems with illegal dumping? I'd imagine charging per bag of waste would cause that to increase.

You're right, it does happen, but not frequently respectively on a large scale.

For example:

1- it does happen that sometimes some illegal trash bags are found in the woods (most of the time it's still in trash bags and not spread everywhere as they usually don't contain animal/vegetable stuff, as that would anyway be free to be disposed of, therefore animals don't sniff it therefore they don't mess it up), but then they're reported to the police/municipality by whoever discovered them and are then collected.

2- same thing in urban areas: sometimes (very rarely as much as I know and have experienced) some "illegal" trash bags show up in your own trash-container, then usually you have to talk to the trash collector and they'll still pick it up.

But:

- about case #2, as mentioned in Wikipedia, the analysis of what's contained in the illegal trash does happen for real (kind of "CSI: Trash"), so if I would put into it something which shows my name (e.g. old newspaper) then I would be screwed (probably not the first time, but I would be by the 2nd or 3rd time that the same thing happens). Even if I would do everything perfectly then after at least the 2nd time all neighbours would all try to find the perpetrator => high risk.

- about case #1 and in general, the country is small and has a relatively high density in the habitable areas (e.g. not in the mountains) => many eyes around, so if you keep doing that twice or three times you are likely to be noticed by somebody, who will report that to the police or at least the municipality - same thing about rural areas (fewer eyes but as well fewer visitors, therefore likeliness of being observed doing something bad after repeated offense is still high). Nothing in the mountains as far a I know (too much effort driving up there to then take the risk to dump stuff while potentially being photographed from the other side of the valley by e.g. someone that was doing trekking).

I believe that we don't have problems with electronics like TVs, washing machines, HDDs, fridges, etc... because you can just dump them for free at any shop that sells them (that's the embedded-tax-thing I mentioned above), so it would be a waste of time & effort plus a lot of risk to dump them into the woods instead of doing the same thing comfortably and officially at any such shop (I admit that some shops get more old stuff than others due to their location and parking space, but nothing is perfect).

In bigger countries that have more open/free space, illegal dumping would most probably be a much bigger problem. But on one hand people that do repeated illegal dumping could still be caught, and on the other hand the target is never 100% - already having something like 75% of the population sticking to the waste disposal rules (recycling being a subset) is probably a huge improvement vs. doing nothing :)

Similar situation in Ireland to above regulations and processes. Also, if you buy anything with a plug, the retailer must accept the equivalent appliance you are replacing and recycle.

> the retailer must accept the equivalent appliance you are replacing and recycle.

Interesting - to be honest I'm not sure if Switzerland has the same rule or not - so far I always brought my old stuff to local retailers even if I didn't buy anything from them - usually we just leave the stuff outside of the shop in some designated areas. It could be that the retailers then "get a cut" on what is sent to be recycled, I honestly don't know, but so far nobody ever complained to me.

One thing that is not so great is that outside of those shops there are usually "scavengers" (trying to find something valuable that can be reused or sold - quite good chances for that to happen in Switzerland) that can make quite a mess (e.g. they might break a TV-panel trying to reach for whatever is behind them => glass everywhere on the floor).

I usually position my own stuff tactically to avoid that and leave on it a post-it stating something like "panel has broken pixels" or "device works but battery cannot be charged" or "works perfectly it was just old", etc... => little effort for me, less effort for the scavengers and the shop's recycling area doesn't get messed up :)

> You guys are forgetting another part of the chain, which can make decisions - consumers.

Bad idea. The market is supposed to process information for us. Consumers are just individuals who know what they need and what they want, but not much else. The market (if we are to believe the hype) can process enough information to make selfish actors in aggregate cooperate. So why not let the market solve it?

Consumer-responsibility is pure propaganda: in the same way “we” (collectively) drop plastic into the middle of the ocean, “we” (chiefly the corporations and their marketing departments) drop the symbolic responsibility on consumers.

having end-users "compute" is the most distributed form that is available. You just need to provide a necessary input for the computation (cost of disposing what they bought). In fact, I almost finished my response with "so why not let the market solve it?" =)

The amount of plastic and paper packaging/marketing that you are forced to accept and dispose of when you buy products is getting extreme. I recently bought a micro-sd card, and had to dispose of: 1. the large shipping package, 2. the enormous (in volume and mass) product plastic shell package, 3. the glossy paper marketing insert inside the package, 4. the user’s manual (!), 5. the unwanted microsd-to-sd adapter. Probably 99.5% of the mass shipped to me was trash. Ridiculous that the manufacturer and shipper can just externalize that cost onto me and inevitably the environment.

I’d expect they could ship me the bare sd card in a tiny envelope without all that waste if they were incentivized to.

As a consumer though you could also have bought it in a store or waited until you needed something else as well.

I never understood the mindset of buying only a usb-stick or similar online.

Yes, the waste is obnoxious, but the consumer isn't always innocent either.

I wonder how far you have to drive to offset the benefit in waste from shipping

Well I hope you wouldn't be making a long trip for the sole purpose of buying an sd-card either.

Some sort of emergency? Sure, but that is hardly the norm.

I figure it is a wash. The shipping package can and does get reused, so I’m really complaining about waste items 2-5. Totally useless.

Ordering 2 items from Amazon will almost certainly result in two separate packages being shipped to you. (At least that’s my experience here in Germany - YMMV.)

Then don't order from amazon.

I had the same experience with a local webshop here (bol.com). I needed two types of batteries but these webshops are more like marketplaces. They don't have a feature to search for items from a particular vendor. But I was able to simply browse and order the two types of batteries from a single vendor.

Next day: two packages. From the same vendor.

(Now that I think about it, the original sin was buying a product that is not rechargeable.)

I have almost always gotten them in the same box. Often the box might be a little big, but when two things come from Amazon at the same time they invariably show up in the same box.

Buying in-store or via delivery service (as opposed to Amazon) is almost guaranteed to increase the amount of plastic packaging. Many stores have those stupid anti-consumer clamshell packages (mostly to reduce shoplifting, but at high environmental cost).

Let's not forget all the packaging in shipping the item to the destination as well (that you don't see because it's discarded in the shipping room floor).

It's gotten to the point where I simply don't buy unless I absolutely need it anymore.

> It's gotten to the point where I simply don't buy unless I absolutely need it anymore.

I mean, that is the most environmentally friendly solution.

Only the outer shipping package would have been any different though. The rest sounds the same as I'd see it in a shop.

The market could fix this if retailers were legally required to publish a searchable packaging database listing the total amount of packaging they use per item sold. Comparisons could be made. Worst offenders singled out. Consumers could force change by having the knowledge to make an informed decision.

> Local authorities should be able to collect up all Mcdonalds packaging and hand it back to them.

Yes, with a bill for the cost of collection and at some point (after repeated failures?), a fine to motivate a course correction.

> after repeated failures?

Failure to do what?

Failure to address the problems they are causing.

Eg near me is a nice park. Every single evening the car park gets a dump of McDonalds and Wendy’s rubbish.

Yes, it’s their customers and not them, but if those companies addressed their waste by creating less, making more efficient packaging or finding other ways to improve the situation, they would make way more difference than any customer could.

That should include allowing drive thrus to stamp the car number plate onto packaging.

Feels like we get closer to big brother every day, only this time it's self-monitoring.

I truly do not understand people who whip trash out the window of their car. It's not even convenient to maneuver around in a car to collect trash from in there. And you have nothing to do while you sit at the gas pump, where there are conspicuously placed trash receptacles...

Personally, I think they should drop the fines for littering and change it to being required to clean up litter for some duration, maybe 20 hours.

Go see the fruits of your labor, and what it takes to clean up after you and what we put city workers through to clean up.

Failure to reduce the amount of trash they're handing out to their customers.

More realistically, make them pay for the disposal of as much garbage as they spread.

Germany has had this for years. Producers have to pay a recycling fee covering the disposal of the packaging they use. The yellow garbage can for recyclables is paid for by that fee. Also, merchants have to take back and dispose of any packaging they sell or use to ship.

Hasn't really helped, amount of packaging is still increasing.

It's really not something we can control effectively as consumers. My supermarket sells fruits and vegetables mostly pre-packaged. Fees are not enough, we need to make this kind of barely useful plastic containers illegal. Potatoes don't need to come in plastic containers.

Yes.

The "make producers pay" trope is also a fallacy imho. Packaging cost is just passed through the price to the consumer. Packaging and recycling are quite cheap for most products, so unpackaged goods are barely cheaper (often even more expensive, since enviromentally conscious stuff is "premium"). And unpackaged goods are damaged more often than properly packaged ones, so they'll rot on the shelves to be thrown away in a higher proportion. Consumers like their products nice and undamaged in presentable packaging, so they will subconciously prefer packaged goods. Therefore even with a slight decrease in per-item profits, producers will choose prettier packaging. So with only a slight price increase like paying for recycling, packaging will stay.

So to get rid of plastic packaging, we either need to ban it, make it vastly more expensive, far more than the consumer would want to bear, so they'd pick something unpackaged. But that is dangerous, because a cartel of producers could stay with packaging, then it is just another tax the consumer cannot avoid. Or we need to just ban certain kinds of packaging.

Also, there are hurdles for the sale of unpackaged goods, e.g. meat: I cannot take my own (reusable) plastic or metal box to the butcher's and have it filled with meat because of hygiene regulations preventing the butcher from handling my box. Supermarkets also are ill-equiped to deal with unpackaged goods in great quantities, dispensers, scales and stuff needs vastly more space. Just imagine the jam-shelf taking up as much space as the produce section, with some sticky floor due to the drippings...

> The "make producers pay" trope is also a fallacy imho. Packaging cost is just passed through the price to the consumer. Packaging and recycling are quite cheap for most products, so unpackaged goods are barely cheaper (often even more expensive, since enviromentally conscious stuff is "premium").

It’s not a fallacy. The tax is just too low. Keep raising the tax on plastic until it curbs behavior, problem solved.

The real problem is this is an unpopular solution, as most people like the convenience of plastic, and therefore politically untenable.

It’s always been a simple solution. Keep increasing tax on fossil fuels until it reduces consumption. But that means people giving up their large spread out homes and vacations and large vehicles and plastic wrapped goods. Therefore it hasn’t happened, and probably won’t until the environment changes enough to force people.

That's unpopular in part because it's extremely regressive. The amount you will have to change your life is going to be directly related to how wealthy you are. The rich are unlikely to change. They'll simply pay more and move on, or dodge it by refueling and shopping in other countries. The middle class will have some adjustments. Maybe running the heat less, maybe they trade in their SUV for a sedan, maybe they vacation less. They'll get by fine.

The poor will be utterly destroyed by this. Their cars are often the worst polluters because they're old (and may have had the catyllitic converter stolen in a bad neighborhood). Food costs will go up due to increased transportation costs (and possibly packaging costs, if suitable green replacements can't be found). Their homes are extremely unlikely to have modern, energy efficient upgrades (things like windows, more modern insulation, even sealing around windows might be bad). Their appliances are likewise unlikely to be modern and energy efficient. And supply and demand is not a good answer. If it was, no one would be living in those anyways. No one wants to live with a draft, but sometimes your options are a drafty apartment in a bad part of town, or a drafty apartment in a worse part of town.

I do think it's doable, but it needs to be a lot more nuanced than "tax fossil fuels until people cave". That foists most of the problem onto the people with the least means to change.

> That's unpopular in part because it's extremely regressive. The amount you will have to change your life is going to be directly related to how wealthy you are. The rich are unlikely to change. They'll simply pay more and move on, or dodge it by refueling and shopping in other countries.

Wealth inequality is a different problem, and has a different solution (taxes on wealth and income and otherwise redistribution of wealth).

Want people to use fewer fossil fuels? Make fossil fuels more costly.

Want people to have more equal lives? Make wealth inequality more costly.

And this would have to be a global solution, with the quality of life for the people used to using tons of fossil fuels (America, Western Europe, etc) going down towards the quality of life of people in poorer countries who don’t use as many fossil fuels.

And that is not acceptable to pretty much all people in the developed world, rich or poor.

Whereas I agree, it is never so easy. For example, Oregon banned many single use plastic shopping bags. They went away briefly; however, a workaround has been found by stores. They are now using much heavier plastic bags and calling them "reusable". But most people seem to just treat them like the old disposable ones. So a well intentioned, but heavy handed law has put us a step back. We are now using more plastic per bag... The market is very creative, and bans must be made carefully to avoid making a situation worse.

In Germany you just pay for individual bags if you want them, sometimes they’re plastic and sometimes paper, depends on the shop. As far as I can tell this is way more effective than an outright ban, I hardly ever see people buying the bags unless they’ve really forgotten or are tourists.

> amount of packaging is still increasing.

So in practice you pay more for nothing?

Not sure, theoretically the cost should just have shifted from the garbage can fees to the increase in product prices. But of course the garbage can fees are steadily rising...

Sounds quite easy to be solved by producers. Just send the trash to third-party country. Mission completed.

When there is the news leaking out, producer could blame on the contractor and sue them. A nice model. Isn't it?

I think all products should come with a disposal fee incorporated, based on the reuse/recycling/compostability ability of the product - with items that are fully biodegradable at home and landfill having no fee at all. This would drive producers to use the most degradable packaging possible so they can drive down the cost of their products. It would also help reduce the problem of producers combining two recyclable plastics in to a single non-recyclable whole.

I'd also like to see a rebate program at recyclers for big-box goods. People are more likely to do the right thing if there's an incentive. Probably paid for by a fee on sale, but again scaled based on recyclability (and possibly repairability / waste from repairs)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_Waste_Recycling_Fee shows Some states in the USA have something like that.

The EU has https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waste_Electrical_and_Electroni.... It doesn’t pay consumers for returning items, but does make it easier. Larger shops _have_ to take in old equipment for free, for example (for smaller electronics even if you aren’t a customer)

In some (¿all?) EU countries, if you have an item (washing machine, television) delivered to your house, the deliverer must take in a similar item, working or not, for free. That makes recycling easier than disposing of the item yourself.

Or go even a step further and directly address the fundamental problem, which is externalities. "Time to entering waste stream" still isn't the fundamental "end result" to optimize. Just require that the cost of plastic and other materials includes the cost of safe disposal or recycling, just like the cost of gasoline ought to include the cost of the externalities of burning it.

It's difficult to predict how much something will cost in the future. If your example was followed then a device that lasts a year and a device that lasts 10 years would have the same added cost. This is not ideal, since it may not be obvious to consumers how long the device will last.

> If your example was followed then a device that lasts a year and a device that lasts 10 years would have the same added cost. This is not ideal, since it may not be obvious to consumers how long the device will last.

That seems entirely orthogonal to me, and market forces would presumably be able to handle consumer preference for longer-lasting products (barring other market failures, like monopolies, but that's also orthogonal to the externalities of using certain materials).

The device that gets thrown away in 10 years still imposes the same externality as the one that gets thrown away after one year [0], and thus I don't see any reason for changing a fee based on that. Note that the person who buys the 1-year devices every year pays 10x the "externality fees" as the person who buys the 10-year device.

[0] Of course, the externalities themselves can change over time, e.g. new better recycling methods, so the externalities would have to be appraised periodically.

> Note that the person who buys the 1-year devices every year pays 10x the "externality fees" as the person who buys the 10-year device.

That may not be clear at time of purchase though. You could express this as an estimated rate per year, though. Both devices have a $50 externality fee. One has a 1 year warranty, 1 has a 10 year warranty, so the first has a $50/year externality and the second has a $5/year externality. Doing it by warranty period also helps prevent claiming a device should last much longer than it does.

Sure. I'd be all for a more generic waste tax. Include the cost of packaging and as you suggest, the carbon cost of shipping it too.

I do think any reduction due to a manufacturer recycling/ remanufacturing goods should be reflected in whatever fees are charged.

For a short while, it was super trivial and cheap to fix smartphones. Lots of little shops would have spare or alternative parts for popular models. Today, it's extremely hard and expensive to do so. If we would get "calorie labels" on smartphones using iFixit reparavility scores, I'm sure maybe people would be influenced by them.

They should have to include a list of prices for common repairs. I know a few people who would probably shop based on the price to repair a broken screen.

We're at the point where repairs are an expected part of a phones lifecycle. Battery replacements are basically required now unless you want to buy a new phone every year or two. We really should start adding info about that to packaging.

The problem with the latter two options is that it allows manufacturers to continue with proprietary DRM and anti-consumer dickery.

The waste issue is important, but so is not invalidating physical things because of planned obsolescence, or that the manufacturer decided to stop reporting it.

> Few people care to repair Android phones because you can't upgrade the OS after 2 years regardless.

This is a mistruth (add: unintentional I'm sure) - and I hope people stop repeating this. I'll explain in detail.

1. Older versions of Android aren't crippled in the way an older iOS version is. On iOS for instance, Safari is tied to the iOS, while on Android none of the apps are tied to the OS version. Any phone running Android 7 (or maybe even 6) would run the most Google and non-Google services without any problems.

2. Most good Android phones such as those from Samsung or Google get 3 years of updates. If you have a Galaxy S8 from Apr 2017, you're still receiving updates in 2021.

3. Finally you have LineageOS. If you choose the phone correctly, you can potentially have very long term support with the excellent LineageOS. Now this isn't everyone's cup of tea, but for most people on HN it's fairly trivial to do.

> while on Android none of the apps are tied to the OS version

Apps are compiled for target SDKs and if your phone is too old the apps wont work.

You're right, I should have been clearer. I meant the Google Apps bundle of essential apps (especially the Web Browser).

LineageOS regularly ends support for old devices. Its builds are made by a handful of volunteers in their spare time, and any of those volunteers may lose interest and walk away. Because Android building is so byzantine, it is not trivial for someone else to come along and restore support for an abandoned phone.

The LineageOS team has repeatedly emphasized that they do not owe anyone long-term support, so please stop recommending it as such. This is one of the reasons for interest in the PinePhone: it is now supported by the mainline kernel and much easier to build for in perpetuity than an Android device.

They don't owe you anything, but for many popular devices support extends to years. There are many devices on their support list which are 8 years old or more. (eg: Galaxy S4 from 2013, yet running 17.1).

PinePhone is great, but it certainly isn't for people expecting a smartphone to do regular smartphone things - run apps like Whatsapp/Signal etc.

FWIW, two Signal clients now run on the PinePhone.

> Few people care to repair Android phones because you can't upgrade the OS after 2 years regardless.

I sincerely hope the EU will actually do something about that as well. As you point out, it makes no sense to allow to repair something that receives no support for its software components.

What I hope they will do is actually mandating that, if an item is sold as having networking capabilities, the manufacturer is required to maintain (as in, provide security updates for) the software required for the item to continue working as sold, at least for the intended lifetime of the item (that should be explicitly stated by the manufacturer). Maybe exceptions could be granted - after a minimum period of mandatory first-party support - if all code required to build the firmware was open sourced.

Your suggested strategy isn't mutually exclusive - consumers could have the right to repair and manufacturers could be billed based on the value (negative or positive) of waste material that they generate.

What I'm suggesting is the problem isn't repairability, its stuff breaking and getting tossed.

I don't care how manufacturers address this issue, but I do think it's clearly their responsibility to address it.

Also, any legislation should recognize that these devices aren't just physical devices that might need to have a screen replaces. A device which you can replace the screen on, but can't get secure software for is just as worthless as one you can upgrade but can't replace the screen on.

In addition to the other concerns, I would say the biggest problem would be tracking and recording the time to disposal. Most electronics end up in a drawer somewhere and for tho that don’t, Who is digging through the trash to log them in this scenario

> Few people care to repair Android phones because you can't upgrade the OS after 2 years regardless.

A little nitpick but, for Google's phones it's way more than that.

I suppose there would be some regulatory agency that takes samples and estimates the number of items disposed, and then levies the costs?

Much trash is already processed before it's buried to remove recyclables regardless.

I would suggest requiring some kind of RFID chip or other scannable code which can be checked in the refuse stream.

Incentivise consumers by giving them a cut of the charge to manufacturers when they report trashing an item. That is, if you recycle a phone within 5 years you get £5 (or some percentage or sale price) which is charged back to the manufacturer.

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