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Comment by whywhywhywhy | Hacker News Reader

Completely pales next to something as egregious as disposable tech that sells in the millions and only has a lifespan of 2 years tops like AirPods.

They will still be washing up on beaches 100 years after every single person involved in their design has passed.

Whole electronics industry needs to take this stuff more seriously, we need more replaceable batteries and storage, right to repair on a global level and laws against the sort of thing Apple does with their repair pricing where the repair costs like $50-100 less than a new device.

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Google says there's been 100M AirPods produced, and that each airpod weighs 4g, plus 38g for the case, so 46g total. That's 4.6 metric kiltons of airpods. The paper says that Bitcoin produces 30.7 metric kilotons of e-waste per year, so that's about 6.5 airpod-scale disasters every single year.

To be a bit more fair in the comparison (virtual vs physical), probally could account for shipping from manufacturer, to distributor, and then finally to the end user? It seems like that'd atleast tip the scales a little bit.

I think the article is talking about waste in the form of ASICs used for mining that need to be constantly replaced with upgraded versions to remain profitable, so it's already physical vs. physical.

Shame on me for not reading the article as I could not access to it (forgot my alumni account) -- only could read the abstract.

I misinterpreted this statement: " On average Bitcoin generates 272 g of e-waste per transaction processed on the blockchain."

To mean the online cost of the hashing/mining, etc, not just physical e-waste.

Regardless this may be moot now, but my feelings was that comparing a consumer product (airpods) to a "bulk consumer" product like ASICs is doing an apple to oranges comparison. Airpods are manufactured in Vietnam and distributed through supply chains throughout the world -- whilst ASICs are manufactured in China and distrubted more locally (in Eurasia)?

On those lines, a company I'm very much been keeping an eye on is framework

https://frame.work/

I've wanted something like this for years, a laptop that is actually repairable but isn't awful in specs or ergonomics. When they start selling in my region I'll be all over it.

If you care about these problems then vote with your wallet.

The LTT videos on them are great. Extra screws in the case, colour coded to prevent long screw damage, QR codes on everything as well.

I'm way too excited about this company, it's all the changes I've been hoping for.

This looks cool, and I appreciate their no-nonsense post about Linux too.

I've never understood why people complain so much about the environmental impact of AirPods. I mean it would be great if they were rechargeable and recyclable etc - but they weigh 4g - about 1/50 of a pair of headphones.

If the average person uses them for 2 years they'll be a drop in the ocean to the tens or hundreds of kilos of plastic and other objects they don't recycle fully in that time.

For me, it's not the plastic casing or even the battery that seems the biggest waste, but their ICs.

It's not that it's polluting the environment that much, more that it's wasteful and creates a unnecessary demand in IC production when they are thrown away in perfect working order.

I got curious, and did some back of the envelope mathematics / Fermi estimation.

> Analysts estimate Apple sold between 14 million and 16 million AirPods in 2017.[38] In 2018, AirPods were Apple's most popular accessory product, with 35 million units sold.[39][40] 60 million units were sold in 2019.

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

In 2020, another 114 million units were sold.

https://www.businessofapps.com/data/apple-statistics/

Each airpod weights about 4g. But we're counting sales. So, we're counting pairs. And we also have to factor in the plastic charging case which comes in at 38g since that's also included in the package as well. That makes for a grand total of 46g per sale.

By my count, the total weight of all airpods ever sold is about 10.350 metric tonnes (46g * 225 million units).

According to the Ocean Cleanup project, the Great Pacific Garbage Page weighs about 88.000 tonnes.

https://theoceancleanup.com/great-pacific-garbage-patch/ Also seems to be confirmed here: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-22939-w

So, all airpods sold between 2017 and end of 2020 make up about... 11.7% of the Great Pacific Garabage Patch.

That's not a number I'd call "negligible". I'm a bit floored and incredulous and not even all too sure of my number work to the point where I've been re-calculating for the past 20 minutes and I'm arriving at the same numbers again and again.

That's just the amount of waste that will need to be disposed of when all units have reached their end of life.

There's also the production process itself which requires resources and produces waste as well. That's not just the molding of plastics and the assembly of circuits. I'm also talking about the extraction, refining,... of natural resources just to produce the half-finished parts that arrive at the plant where the final product is assembled. There's the logistics and transports involved just to move the entire chain. Oh, and the number juggling above is also discounting packaging and wrapping. There's a massive hidden footprint there as well.

~12% of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is no small matter and it shouldn't be dismissed but choice of denominator is important.

If we choose number of plastic bags consumed in American on an annual basis (100 Billion [1]) and go by the mass per bag (5.5g [2]) then just plastic bags in America is 550K tonnes/year of plastic.

Also, according to the UN the world produces as much as 50 million tonnes of electronic and electrical waste a year and they estimate 20% of it is recycled. [3]

So, ya. A penny saved is a penny earned and all. But it's still a penny.

[1] https://www.biologicaldiversity.org/programs/population_and_...

[2] https://stanfordmag.org/contents/plastic-bags-to-recycle-or-...

[3] https://www.unep.org/news-and-stories/press-release/un-repor...

It’s negligible in relation to the huge amount of other disposable plastics that exist in peoples lives.

It’s about equivalent to a weeks worth of plastic Starbucks cups every morning and far less than the packaging on a average shopping trip.

As right as you are, that's besides the point. Bitcoin is waste. Pointing at other, more wasteful sources, is besides the point. Abolish both!

you either get it or you don't. I don't have time to convince you why it's good.

Translation: "I don't have the ability either."

nah, just quoting satoshi

The beautiful thing about Bitcoin is that is it a pure, global, free market writ large. There is absolutely nothing you can do to prevent individuals from choosing to participate in it. Therefore the correct retort to someone like you is to tell you to "cry harder".

You've correctly explained the tragedy of the commons, congratulations. This is exactly why we need regulation to stop people selfishly destroying the environment for everyone for personal gain.

This isn't correct, though. If I decide to start an anti-Bitcoin political movement, I can get leaders elected who can ban the use of Bitcoin in the USA. Sure, some motivated folks will use VPNs and the like, but cutting the general public off from Bitcoin would be devastating. Then who will be crying?

lol, try and ban bitcoin

Why would that be hard? It's used for tons of illegal activity (ransomware as an example).

Only .4% of bitcoin transactions are used for illegal activities.

It'd be hard because you'd have to find every single node and disconnect it from the internet, and something like 90% of Bitcoin nodes run over TOR

> Only .4% of bitcoin transactions are used for illegal activities.

And you know this... how?

Did you know that 96% of statistics are made up on the spot?

https://en.cryptonomist.ch/2021/01/20/chainalysis-crypto-ill...

Here's a source if you're curious

Ah yes, cryptonomist.ch. Such a reliable, and unbiased source!

do you have a metric for what is reliable and unbiased? Any time I see an article on Bitcoin or altcoins on a MSM page its factually incorrect and heavily biased.

Also, can you provide an article showing that Bitcoin is used for "tons" (whatever percentage tons means) of illegal activity?

I think I’ll flip it around. Knowing that every major ransom ware attack in the last year has used Bitcoin, have there been any meaningful legal uses? Has anyone bought a pizza?

Where's your source for that? Is there a metric to define a ransomware attack as "major", and a verifiable list to show the amount and means of payment?

Bitcoin is used daily for remittance payments, which is huge since it's way cheaper than sending money through western mutual

There's also Bitcoin Beach in El Salvador which is a bitcoin only circular economy

Paxful provides a service for people to trade gift cards for Bitcoin

I'm sure the criminals are doing a great job of making sure that they look like they're in the 99.6%!

I can easily think of a number of measures that would make it much harder to participate in the bitcoin market that governments could implement without much trouble.

A critiquing/problem-aware mindset can rightly point to risks and inappropriate excess. In that sense it is part of healthy self-regulation.

If you let it take over, the ensuing negativity and Weltschmerz might paralyze you.

And true, most criticism (whether justified or not) comes to nothing if there's a lack of regulating entity that could do something about it.

> There is absolutely nothing you can do to prevent individuals from choosing to participate in it.

Governments in authoritarian countries have shut down bitcoin mining operations and arrested people.

Someone points out a legitimate problem with something, and the "response" is to point out a "bigger" problem with something else. Its not a response, its a misdirection. Changing the subject doesnt work.

We have seen this "response" so many times that its laughable. Its like a person who owns large number of shares of Company X and everytime someone brings up the serious problems at Company X she tries to change the subject.

The problem is, when pretty much anyone brings up Bitcoin's issues , they've got an axe to grind. So I find it totally valid to bring up any and all bigger, worse, and longer historied comparisons to highlight that complaining about Bitcoin is quite petty; a mosquito bite for a cancer patient.

Bitcoin is still new and poorly understood by a significant percentage of the population and therefore hasn't become part of everyone's "lifestyle to which they've become accustomed" yet, so it's automatically viewed more harshly. The comparisons are, in fact, necessary for the appropriate judgemental context.

I’m open to having my mind changed about blockchain/bitcoin’s utility, I could also see a new cryptocurrency changing my mind about all of this, I really _want_ to like this stuff! But whenever I ask people about the environmental impact of crypto (or really any sub-surface level question about blockchain, smart contracts or NFTs) they either dodge the question, ignore the question, give a shallow non-answer, or call me (a developer who works on integrating AR, VR, IoT and neural style transfer into live theatre) a luddite who doesn’t understand or is afraid of technological change. I’d love to be persuaded about why I should incorporate blockchain into my bag of shiny tricks or how I could use it for good. But I’m getting very frustrated with the community’s refusal to answer a lot of really basic questions about it.

Firstly, cool bleeding edge stuff you're into, I was very interested in a little segment during the Olympics about the technologies used to create crowd noise for the empty stadiums - something that must existed as a small background niche until Covid came along. Not sure if that relates to "live theatre" technologies but it reminded me.

On the topic of Bitcoin and cryptocurrency utility, I'll point you towards another thread where I badly answered a similar question (and re-reading what I wrote I don't answer it at all), the core of the answer is that it's not simple to explain our to understand if you haven't "played" with it yourself to start the mental ball rolling as to its application and usefulness.

Discussion on the El Salvador legal tender go live: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28468982

My specific, but vague, commentary is the 18th comment on the above link.

Bitcoin was created to be an alternative to the corrupt money system that brought about the Global Financial Crisis. That isn't a thing that can be easily understood in its everyday utility to the average citizen, there has to be an understanding of the overall corruption (and potential for corruption) of the current system and there almost has to be agreement about that before Bitcoin can be considered to be something useful at all - ie. If person X doesn't have a problem with the current financial system then Bitcoin is a big, complex, electricity hungry beast alternative to a system that's running just fine, and therefore totally unnecessary.

In the years since Bitcoins inception things like Ethereum have come along to add "smart contract" utility that has allowed for things like Decentralised Finance and NFTs (the current usage of NFTs, I think, is detrimental to its potential for real-world problem solving, such as "proof of ownership" and I can't think of anything other use case right now). Decentralised Finance is so new, however, that we won't know what works well and what works poorly as replacements for existing financial services for a few years - bit I think it's important to go through this process of discovery.

> The problem is, when pretty much anyone brings up Bitcoin's issues , they've got an axe to grind

Or it could be that rational people look at incredibly slow and energy expensive security with no fundamentals and no applications after a decade and are skeptical.

I mean, why would someone have an axe to grind? Bitcoin stole their girl?

The flipside of the "axe to grind" idea is the one where those who are opposed to critical discussion of cryptocurrency always have crypto holdings.

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

Without context no arguments about the environment or waste matter at all. The context is extremely important otherwise we end up replacing something moderately bad for the environment with something even worse.

E.g we replace plastic bags with tote bags but a tote bag must be used over 130 times to make it better than a single use plastic bag.

With your thought we wouldn't even be able to compare the two because you're not interested in the actual reality of these issues.

Everything has cost associated with it, and it makes sense to focus our efforts on the biggest wastes first. Granted, a person could reasonably question whether the utility of airpods isn't better than Bitcoin as well, but my point is that focusing on something else isn't automatically wrong.

There's a company doing AirPod battery replacements, it's a fair bit cheaper than buying new AirPods

https://www.ifixit.com/News/49433/two-college-roommates-and-...

https://www.thepodswap.com/

You really think that AirPods are a larger cause of e-waste than dedicated Bitcoin mining equipment? Or are you comparing dedicate mining equipment to all consumer technology combined?

It sounds to me like the scope of criticism was right in between the two things you're suggesting: "disposable tech that sells in the millions and only has a lifespan of 2 years tops like AirPods."

In this case, I would take take the word "like" to mean "such as". Your first potential interpretation instead implies that you interpreted it to mean "specifically". And the second ignores all the qualifying adjectives.

For my part, I'm becoming increasingly uncomfortable with the dominance of products with built-in, non-replaceable rechargeable batteries in products that don't permit or are fundamentally incompatible with corded use. Because if a fundamental component that it needs in order to function happens to also be a non-replaceable wear item, then yeah, it is a disposable product. As a point of basic morality, we should not be blithely making disposable products that cannot be safely disposed of. It doesn't matter how convenient it is to us, our kids and our grandkids and our peers in less wealthy countries and their kids and grandkids are the ones who will be stuck dealing with the polluted waterways, and we have no right to force that upon them just because we think cords are annoying.

It's really not so different from the leaded gasoline that my grandparents thought was so convenient.

Of course. The example wasnt about AirPods but the whole catalogue of consumer electronics bought every year, for sole reason of owning newer version as a social status.

Iphones pods pads etc etc.

I have an old refurbished iPhone SE, and my AirPods don’t have long battery life but it’s still usable years later and third parties will put in a new battery.

Lots of people use Apple products because they have a long life, not everyone is jumping to the latest and greatest.

Yes, yes. Thats why apple products score the lowest and place in the bottom of repeatability scores every single time. Its because you never have to fix their products right?

You are picking ridiculous point and creating some ridiculous 'true Scotsman'

>Lots of people use Apple products because they have a long life

Like who? You and other 10 people?

> Like who? You and other 10 people?

Lots of people that don’t live in wealthy western countries or people that simply don’t have lots of disposable income.

> or people that simply don’t have lots of disposable income.

Yeah, that is the target market of Apple, people without disposable income. Keep digging man, keep digging.

I get value from using my AirPods while they last. They make my life better. Cryptocurrencies? Great if you got in at the top of the ponzi, but otherwise not.

I get value from holding crypto, its as subjective term as it gets.

Listening to music in strict Islam is considered hurtful and sin. To some people listening to music is as worthless as crypto, or maybe even worse.

Stop whining about crypto being a ponzi scheme. Instead of parroting same points over and over read what ponzi scheme actually is.

It is still early to get into crypto

Yes. Every single person in my work, friends and family has owned multiple AirPods, not a single one of them owns a Bitcoin ASIC.

AirPods sell over 14 million a year, that's an astonishing amount of waste for a product with such a limited lifespan.

I'm fine with people making arguments that Bitcoin is bad for the environment, but e-waste is the least of the worries with it.

> Completely pales next to something as egregious as disposable tech that sells in the millions and only has a lifespan of 2 years tops like AirPods.

Does it? Assuming the claim is accurate, 30700 metric tons per year. Apple sells around 200 million iPhones per year. Assuming 200 g for a phone, that's 40000 metric tons.

Edit: I was off by a factor of 10, corrected. The overall smartphone market is likely approximately 10x of Bitcoin, assuming this study is correct, 200g per device, 1.5 billion devices per year (from https://www.statista.com/statistics/263441/global-smartphone...)

Also, 1.5 billion smartphones per year is incredible. Unless there are many people who break/upgrade their phone several times per year, that means a much bigger fraction of humanity now has access to a computing device and likely also to the world's knowledge than I thought.

Classic whataboutism which also lacks data regarding the comparison. Airpods are an actual physical product. Bitcoin is nothing more than air, speculation.

That said, I prefer a smartphone I can open and replace the battery of. I own one, too: Fairphone 3. I'll look forward to the day wireless earpods have replaceable battery. However, we still gotta think about updating the firmware of the chipset.

Whataboutism is a good thing, and may have been the biggest factor in ending Jim Crow in the US (who was competing with the USSR to determine the future direction of Europe.) America fought the Nazis with a racially segregated military.

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