Re: Burning old TVs to survive: The toxic trade in electrical waste

In article <4950251152.1f610978@uninhabited.net>, roger@hayter.org
says...

 
This is wildly untrue. What makes things "throw away" is that we can make them
so cheaply that the labour to repair them is too expensive for it to be
economic. But modern electronic goods are orders of magnitude more reliable
than the consumer electronic goods of yesteryear, so the problem is *not* the
quality of the goods.
 
What needs investing in the safe recycling of electronic parts, and I would
suggest that both consumers and manufacturers should be responsible for this.
 
 
 

Just like the tire pressure monitors.  Lots of labor just to replace
them.  I just do without on my cars when they fail.

Electronics have been that way in many cases for a while.  I remember
the Commodor Computers.  Not  sure of the exect price but they would
repair them for less than $ 100 for any problem.  You sent them in and
they would pull out the circuit board and put in another one that cost
them about $ 50.  Throw the bad one away.

With labor costing around $ 40 or more per hour the item has to be worth
a lot to repair. The local John Deere shop is around $ 125 or more per
hour.