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Comment by kennywinker | Hacker News Reader

This kind of solution is absolutely what's required. Two addendums:

First, make the deposit a function of battery size not item size or cost (small battery $5 deposit, medium battery $10, large $50). This way the environmental cost of a specific battery is linked to the consumer's cost in a way that it isn't really now when the variation in battery cost is swallowed up in the cost of the item itself.

Second, peg this deposit to inflation. 20 years ago the 5c deposit on a beer can meant a lot more than it does today. I'm old enough to remember my fairly well off grandparents saving up their cans and returning them. Today, nobody I know bothers.

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Third, make manufacturers pay for deposit on devices with non-replaceable batteries.

As in tax them at the time of purchase, on batteries that render a device unusable.

I have to say, it seems ridiculous that we're at the point where people are dying in Europe this week from a heatwave exacerbated by climate change, and we're not even implementing basic measures like this yet.

How much contribution does "electronics with non-replaceable batteries" add to climate change? 10%? 1%? 0.1%? Bringing this up when talking about climate change is like bringing up plastic straws bans in first world countries when talking about microplastic pollution (ie. ignoring the fact that half of microplastics in the ocean comes from fishing gear).

You’ve got to start somewhere though. And anywhere is marginally better than nowhere. As opposed to throwing your arms up in the air saying “it’s pointless we should be doing something else instead so let’s do nothing at all”. That’s exactly what the industry is aiming for, learned helplessness.

> That’s exactly what the industry is aiming for, learned helplessness.

I am wholely in agreement with you but there are some pretty big percentage wise holes that we need to plug.

Namely:

1. Getting ride of coal and Natural Gas power generation (which means replacing with renewables +storage, or fission, none of which are easily deployable)

2. Stopping methane leaks in Oil&Gas pipelines and active/decomissioned wells.

My argument against minimally effective action is that it can make people feel like they did something significant, and therefore discourage further change. Those plastic straws effective function in our society isn't that it removes plastic waste, it just absolves us of responsibility by letting us say we tried

Okay, but what makes you think that interventions like "forcing manufacturers to make electronics have replaceable batteries" are easier to implement than other interventions like "invest in renewable energy projects"? Taking the approach of jumping at every possible intervention that is vaguely relevant (eg. today it's batteries in electronics because of this thread, tomorrow it's banning single use plastics because of some thread about recycling being a lie) seems worse because there won't ever be enough political will/support to get any single project implemented.

> * You’ve got to start somewhere though. And anywhere is marginally better than nowhere.*

These are the classical mistakes people make when optimizing software.

This way you end up spending a lot of effort to make your code 0.0012% faster.

I have no doubt this mistake will keep being made throughout all of human history.

Except that software is usually few devs, lots of users. Here we are all contributors to the climate. So even if we all pick something different from our neighbor, changes can be made. Typical broken reasoning arising from comparing the way world works to software development.

You still need to quantify what impact you have. Otherwise you can't tell grains of sand from mountains.

I wonder how much CO2 impact the CI revolution in open source really has. While I see how this is convenient, I sometimes wonder if we really need to spin up a 30min build for every PR/commit. I have never heard the community reflect on the impact it has with all the convenient cloud computing. Just spin up a ton of hosts to do your thing, yes? If you can pay for it, its OK? I guess owners of fossil-fuel consuming vehicles think the same. So, where are the environmental activists in the open source area pointing fingers at CI usage?

No, you don't. You ought to start with the things that will yield the largest returns for your efforts. The lowest hanging fruit.

At the point we're at now where this crisis is already running out of control, we should do all fruits at the same time.

And of course we shouldn't just ban or tax disposable vapers. But all disposable electronics.

>And anywhere is marginally better than nowhere.

Nope, this is completely wrong. People want to help but they have limited bandwidth. When you give them someway they can feel like they are helping without meaningfully doing anything, you’ve reduced their attention/effort that will go into real solutions.

Doing minuscule shit is absolutely harmful to the cause. This is one of those areas where a compromise is as bad as doing nothing with the additional downside of patting yourself on the back thinking you made progress.

I know a woman who regularly drives almost an hour round trip to the recycling center for plastics, as our village does not have plastic recycling bins. She's certain that she is doing her part, and absolutely does not want to hear that recycling plastic emits more CO2 than creating new plastic, nevermind the fuel she's burned.

Though driving an hour to recycle a few plastic bottles is obviously bonkers, I do want to point out that there are more reasons to recycle than just reducing CO2.

Yes, but the immediate threat to humanity is atmospheric CO2. Not landfill space nor "running out of oil".

Technically it's more generally atmospheric 'green-house gases', of which CO2 is the one we produce massive amounts of.

Methane and Nitrous Oxide also play a massive role. We produce less of those mostly through gas leaks and shipping/diesel fuel but they are a lot worse than CO2 if we think of it in terms of per kilo impact.

This isn't (just) about landfill space or resource availability.

It's a shame that a couple of generations have been led to believe that the only real environmental disaster is climate change. It's certainly a big and pressing one, but it's like we've all but forgotten the many other issues that our lifestyle of ready massive consumption has caused.

Some examples of other environmental impacts that 'reduce, reuse and recycle' helps with: the impact of mining and oilfield operations on the natural environment; heavy metals and other toxins in waterways from mining and badly managed landfills; microplastics in the ocean; acid rain from Nox/Sox emissions; many other forms of air pollution from the mining industry.

Just to name a few.

No, "starting small" and other consumer side activism are tools actively pushed by oil companies in order to make you believe you are making a difference; so that we don't pursue actual hard hitting legislation that regulate the oil industry.

Carnival Cruise's line of ships (which contain about 50 ships) contribute the same amount of emissions as all the cars in Europe. We could make the hard descision to regulate cruise ships away or maybe everyone in Europe could stop driving altogther

How about get rid of one cruise ship, and maybe just the Italians stop driving? /j

Yeah, Cruise ships are pretty nuts!

> And anywhere is marginally better than nowhere.

No. Stepping over dollars to pick up pennies is stupid.

The problem is a significant portion of people utterly refuse to say those dollars exist, or that they should be picked up.

Net zero means net zero. Batteries are going to be a huge part of our future and we need sustainable approaches to managing them right now and even more later.

What I mean is, certainly we need to make some huge changes, yet we're not even at the point of taking on these relatively straightforward ones.

This problem does not seem straightforward. Making have replaceable batteries and preserving their existing functionality (eg. thinness, water resistance) doesn't seem easy, nor does convincing the population to accept worse phones when most people are on a 2 year upgrade cycle.

If convincing people to not replace their phone every two years, or accept one that's a little thicker is too difficult, then I suspect we're in big trouble.

It's not really the cost, it's the cost/benefit ratio. I think most people would be on board with their sleek smartphones reverting to brickphones if it meant climate change was solved once and for all, but making the same sacrifice to reduce climate change by 0.1% would be a tough sell.

As the aphorism goes "a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step".

Seems like you'll only do things that make a significant contribution. Yes, with drinking straws it was a symbolic action, and yes you risk people thinking "ok, done it". But the current alternative is no action at all. We need to start, take the first small steps before chastising ourselves for not having gone any miles yet.

>But the current alternative is no action at all.

Why is there a dichotomy of "fund low impact project that's relevant to this thread" and "do nothing at all"?

What's the currently presented third option for management of disposable electronics with lithium cells?

> But the current alternative is no action at all

Most of the world is spending huge effort to decarbonize. May well not be enough, but it's very different from nothing.

I strongly recommend that, wherever you get your news from, try looking somewhere else!!

Sorry, what else is being done about disposable electronics containing lithium cells? Could you recommend a news story (UK specific, preferably) with details of other projects in the context of the OP. Fwiw, I don't doubt that I'm not aware of every environmental project in this space. Thanks.

I'm talking about action to combat climate change.

If you're talking about the sub-sub-set of that which is disposable electronics containing lithium cells, we were talking past each other.

Then the first step is one of transit/bike paths, removing beef and milk from your diet, or improving your insulation to at least rsi 5. Repairability is a major issue, but a minor tweak like that is a finger in the dam. More effective would be mandating schematics and extending default warranties to include third party repair for 5 years or so.

Gerry McGovern's "World Wide Waste" (podcast, book and site) is a great place to start learning about the real impact of our electronic world on our environment.

Just on microplastics, fishing gear isn't even a blip on microplastics in the ocean.

From Primary Microplastics in the Oceans: Boucher & Friot 2017

  35% Clothing and textiles
  28% Tyres
  24% City dust
  7% Road markings
  3.7% Marine coatings
  2% Beauty products
  <1% Plastic nurdles

I have seen wildly different estimates for the origins of micro plastics from different studies.

The obvious issues are plastics breakdown at wildly different rates so the ratios of plastic pollution doesn’t match the ratios seen in the ocean. There are significant differences in where each type of plastic enters the ocean and where it ends up so sampling different parts of the ocean results in different observations. Finally sizes vary widely so measuring by volume, piece, or weight gives different results.

On top of this it’s not always easy to say the actual origin of a given piece was.

> Just on microplastics, fishing gear isn't even a blip on microplastics in the ocean.

My source is https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2018/08/Great-Pacific-Gar..., which in turn sources its data from https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-22939-w

Current situation requires changes of various sizes on all fronts.

It doesnt matter if its 0.1% or 10% -> we should fix all of those cases with sensible laws.

The goal is to reach that 90% in total.

Politics are just corrupted and lazy old farts.

I don't think disposable vapers are legal in Europe? I've never seen them, certainly not lying in the streets. At least here in Barcelona.

I know several people that vape but all of them use pretty nice reusable ones.

term to google/search on any social media site that has younger users: "elfbar". Disposable vapes very much exist.

Thanks, I see.. I've never seen those here in Barcelona. Only the refillable ones.

I hope they are banned. There is no reason for something like this to be disposable.

The reason they are disposable is people want them. There's no other reason for anything to be disposable.

I'm in Ireland, they seem pretty popular here. Especially with those who are barely old enough to buy them.

Personally I'd be comfortable seeing them banned - for the same reason we banned the sale of individual cigarettes. Their only role in the market is to make addiction accessible at the lowest barrier to entry.

Far more people die every day because of obesity caused diseases and we haven’t even meaningfully taxed high sugar foods.

Are they really dying or just getting a nice sun tan and eating ice cream? Is it climate change or summer?

That has a) nothing to do with the topic at hand (improving recycling rates) anr b) isn't even effective. A deposit isn't a tax. You need to give the consumer money for actually bringing the product to a recycling spot, so a tax doesn't help. Psychological it's a better motivator if that money was originally paid by the consumer as in you're losing money you paid, if you don't bring it back, and it's also much easier to implement.

If you want to tax non-replaceable batteries that will just be factored into the price and the thing is that easily replaceable batteries are in conflict with other design goals consumers are willing to pay for (like water proofness).

I understand the frustration with non-replaceable batteries creating some kind of planned obsolescence, but there is no easy solution without sacrificing other things.

>You need to give the consumer money for actually bringing the product to a recycling spot, so a tax doesn't help.

Where does the money come from that you are giving consumers for their batteries?

It's a deposit just like how some states do for cans. You pay extra when you buy it, and when you bring it back to be recycled you get the money back

I guess I'm not seeing how this is fundamentally different than a tax.

Because you get it back. If anything, the state run deposit programs lose money from people returning cans from out of the state.

But it doesn't even have to be state run. It could simply be mandated that the manufacturers buy back their old batteries for a minimum price.

Wait a minute. You mean you get five cents here and ten cents there. You could round up bottles here and run them out to Michigan for the difference.

>If anything, the state run deposit programs lose money from people returning cans from out of the state.

The state also loses money here, unless the cost of running this program is neligible.

>But it doesn't even have to be state run. It could simply be mandated that the manufacturers buy back their old batteries for a minimum price.

I'm not saying this is a bad program, but this still walks, talks, and quacks like a tax.

Have you ever hired a car before? You pay for the time you have the car, and you also pay a certain amount as a "deposit". This is money that the rental place keeps, and when you bring the car back undamaged they give you the deposit back. If you damage the car, you don't get your deposit back.

This is the same idea.

Buy a device with a battery, pay some small amount as a deposit, get your deposit back when you bring it back for recycling.

So when I go buy a device, I pay some extra amount, enforced by the state. I can then get that back (a deposit, or dare I say, refund), when I return the battery.

I'm not saying I don't like the idea, but this is a tax with a different name. And we haven't even gotten to how someone pays for the infrastructure for all this battery cleanup.

> peg this deposit to inflation. 20 years ago the 5c deposit on a beer can meant a lot more than it does today

Adjusted for inflation, 5¢ in 2002 would just be 8¢.

You might have to forgive them, if they’re talking about their folks with the ear marked “20 years” they’re likely old like me and think that means 1970. Us old folks tend to think “20 years ago” means 20 years before 1990’s. It’s a common mental flub.

That would make the inflation value closer to $0.38 in today’s money. It’s not a lot, but when you’re getting almost 8x the amount for each can, it adds up.

Bottle deposits aren't that old: MA is 1982, CA is 1987, etc: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Container_deposit_legislation_...

5¢ in 1982 would be 15¢ now, so it's more, but not that much more?

It is 3X, and when it's per can that does add up to a significant amount. That would add $1.20 to a 12-pack case, which usually cost just $6 here (admittedly a state that doesn't do deposits).

Glass bottles have 8 Cent deposit in Germany and plastic bottles/tin cans have 25 Cent. I rarely ever not bring a plastic bottle or can back, but I do let glass bottles stand around near garbage cans for the bottle collectors.

I see the same behavior among many others. It's just anecdotal, but that 3x seems to make a huge difference.

Bottle deposits were a thing in the 1970s when I was a kid. Those bottles were heavy glass, made to be returned, washed, and re-used many times. I'm not sure it was legislated however, I think it was just what the local bottlers did to get their bottles back.

It was a great way to earn money as a kid in the 70s too. Wander around and find old beer/coke/milk bottles and return them for the deposit.

1976 for Michigan(and 10c at that). My mom and I used to save every can when we lived in MI, I remember doing the deposits, and thought it was crazy that we were getting money for that.

I was definitely remembering events that happened in the mid-90s as 20 years ago. So, according to the CPI, 1995->2002 (27 years ago, good god) $0.05 -> $0.09

That $0.04 doesn't sound like much, but say you were collecting enough cans to make $50/day in 1995 money (560 cans) - now you're making only $28 a day. That's the difference between having a home and being homeless.

It's also the difference between "worth saving up and taking a trip to the return center" and "meh, chuck em". Though at least the latter helps people trying to collect more than 500 cans a day.

Maybe we should tax externalities of non-renewables more before we start taxing renewables?

I think we're talking about giving money, not taking money

A deposit isn’t a tax, it’s an incentive to make sure that a renewable stays in the cycle instead of ending up in the environment. Return it and you get your money back.

It also provides an effective income for those disadvantaged enough; if the five cent deposit on cans had increased with inflation there'd still be an incentive to do it.

$1-5 for vape devices would be similar.

Yeah, if soda bottles had a $1 deposit on them to ensure proper recycling that would be pretty tough to adjust to but good for the environment.

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