There is SOME progress
being made - but the imposition of a $10 disposal fee at the consumer
level has ended up with all kinds of monitors etc being dumped beside
the road.

Wrong approach.

Pay the consumer $10 for proper disposal and the roadside dumping will
disappear over night.

As I said, the disposal is being charged against the consumer at the
end of life of the product...in time the politicians will get it right
and charge for it at the beginning of the product sale.

TMT

clare wrote:
On Wed, 17 Jan 2007 07:12:27 +1100, "Rod Speed"
wrote:

Too_Many_Tools wrote

It occurs because it is allowed to occur.

It occurs because there is no practical alternative
with an industry as fast moving as electronics.

LOL...you mean an industry that has so far been
able to dump long term costs on the public.

There is no practical alternative, like I said.

The public certainly isnt going to wear 'environmental'
fools proclaiming that they cant have modern electronic
devices because of some purported long term costs.

And what long term costs there are are completely trivial
compared with the long term costs of the food industry
alone, let alone the car industry, etc etc etc anyway.

BS.
When we're finished with food it is "totally recycled"
Yes, there is the transportation, but disposal of the end of life
product is not a terribly serious issue.

With cars, they are over 95% recycleable - and they ARE recycled.
Tires are aproblem, but advances are being made there.
With electronics, it all ends up in landfill. There is SOME progress
being made - but the imposition of a $10 disposal fee at the consumer
level has ended up with all kinds of monitors etc being dumped beside
the road. Overall, significantly less than FIVE PERCENT of all
consumer electronics devices are recycled, or properly disposed of.
Less than ONE PERCENT of replaceable, non rechargeable batteries are
responsibly disposed of.
Well over NINETY PERCENT of automotive batteries are recycles and
responsibly disposed of.

When you see electronics being dumped in Africa
to avoid the cost of disposal, I think we are seeing
the responsibility coming home to roost soon.

Nope, all you are actually seeing is the inevitable
result of terminally silly 'environmental' legislation.

And when the cost of disposal is finally taken into account,
the true cost of electronics will be adjusted for that disposal.

Just utterly silly pointless paper shuffling.

It can't come soon enough....

Taint gunna happen, you watch.

Its only the europeans that are actually stupid enough to
even attempt something like that. And even they arent
actually stupid enough to do much in that area anyway.
Because even the stupidest politician realises what the
electoral consequences of that would inevitably be.

They'd be out on their arses so fast their feet wouldnt even touch the ground.


Rod Speed wrote:
Too_Many_Tools wrote:

There's been various attempts over the years at marketing
easily upgradeable computers, but invariably by the time you
were ready to upgrade, the cost of a new CPU module was
a sizable portion of the cost of a whole new PC, as well as
the rest of the major components were showing their age.

The upgrade of electronics would not be a significant cost if the
true cost of a computer was borne by the company and not the public.

Fantasy. And the cost is ALWAYS borne by the public, regardless of
how the company may be slugged by hare brained penalty schemes
anyway.

We keep hearing how the economy of electronics lowers the
cost of a product but one of the greatest costs to society is the
cost of production, distribution and disposal of electronic items.

They are a tiny part of the total production
distribution and disposal costs of everything else.

Even just food alone leaves it for dead.

It occurs because it is allowed to occur.

It occurs because there is no practical alternative
with an industry as fast moving as electronics.


James Sweet wrote:

And I want to add something about "planned obsolescence" because
it is often misused. If people are choosing to buy cheap, it's
hardly that the manufacturers are making things so they will
break. The consumer often wants that cheaper tv set or VCR.



Rather than planned obsolescence, it's normally more a case of how
many cost reducing corners can they cut and still have it last
"long enough". It's hard to blame the manufactures, they're
supplying what the average consumer is demanding.



If my computer from 1979 had been intended to last forever, it
would have been way out of range in terms of price. Because
they'd have to anticipate how much things would change, and build
in enough so upgrading would be doable. So you'd spend money on
potential, rather than spending money later on a new computer
that would beat out what they could imagine in 1979. And in
recent years, it is the consumer who is deciding to buy a new
computer every few years (whether a deliberate decision or they
simply let the manufacturer lead, must vary from person to
person.)



There's been various attempts over the years at marketing easily
upgradeable computers, but invariably by the time you were ready to
upgrade, the cost of a new CPU module was a sizable portion of the
cost of a whole new PC, as well as the rest of the major components
were showing their age.



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