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

On Mon, 2 Dec 2024 16:08:33 +0100, "Carlos E.R."
<robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:

On 2024-12-02 15:25, Roger Hayter wrote:

On 2 Dec 2024 at 13:40:34 GMT, ""UFO"" <tech@parts-link.net> wrote:
 

We try to but since China makes them now as throw away
non repairable cheap goods and sells them global, they should
be who leads the cleanup.

 
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.

>
Well... take a programmable timer. Eventually they fail, because the
battery in them fail. But they are manufactured without screws that one
can undo. That is China fault.

China's no worse than anyone else. You could say the same about
Mercedes Benz or BMW. The amount of stuff that ends up in landfill or
shipped abroad for disposal is a huge scandal and ought to be THE
prime environmental concern - not some nonsense about CO2, which is
harmless and not to blame for 'global warming' in any way.
What's needed is for governments to mandate a right to repair on all
new goods. Wasn't the EU supposed to be doing something of that sort
years ago? Why haven't they?

What needs investing in the safe recycling of electronic parts, and I would
suggest that both consumers and manufacturers should be responsible for this.