To save the planet don't buy a new phone

ubuysa

The BSOD Doctor
As far as CO2 emissions are concerned, a 2018 Canadian university study estimated that building a new smartphone – and specifically, mining the rare materials inside them – accounts for 85% to 95% of the device’s total CO2 emissions for two years. That means, said one report, that “buying one new phone takes as much energy as recharging and operating a smartphone for an entire decade.”
Source: https://www.themarketmakernews.com/...dont-buy-that-shiny-new-iphone-john-naughton/
 

Steveyg

MOST VALUED CONTRIBUTOR
I use a phone until it doesn't work anymore, still using a Samsung Galaxy 10 I think. I'll keep using it until it wont charge anymore, I only really use it for messaging my mates, music and work so I don't need anything fancy
 

SpyderTracks

We love you Ukraine
I use a phone until it doesn't work anymore, still using a Samsung Galaxy 10 I think. I'll keep using it until it wont charge anymore, I only really use it for messaging my mates, music and work so I don't need anything fancy
I'm on a galaxy 3. I don't need anything special either.

May have left out "fold" from the name and the fact that I want everything weather I need it or not.

I do think stories like this can be quite misleading though. The running cost of a phone are so tiny (talking like £10 or something stupid a year in electricity) that it makes it seem really terrible. But actually it's the offset rather than the cost.
 
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Martinr36

MOST VALUED CONTRIBUTOR
I'm on a galaxy 3. I don't need anything special either.

May have left out "fold" from the ne and the fact that I want everything weather I need it or not.

I do think stories like this can be quite misleading though. The running cost of a phone are so tiny (talking like £10 or something stupid a year in electricity) that it makes it seem really terrible. But actually it's the offset rather than the cost.
Yeah if we looked at everything like this we wouldn't buy anything
 

SpyderTracks

We love you Ukraine
Ok, so this was 3 years ago, but at the time they reckoned it cost around £1.09 to charge a phone for a full year, one full charge a day:


Just to add to this, there's been a significant effort in the computing arena, especially in the mobile space to use recycled materials and especially, rare earth metals. Apple only use 100% recycled aluminium on all their phones and ipads, as well as recycled rare earth metals.

These recycle services like MusicMagpie, and O2 Recycle etc, they refurbish newish models for resale at an exorbitant profit, but the older models are put into recycling the materials and these are sold back to the big giants like Apple and Samsung.

There's more to this story than meets the eye. I tend not to side with the huge mega corporations, but on this front, I do think they are taking green initiatives quite seriously. Certainly moreso than most of our local "recycling services" where you're fined if you put the wrong thing in the green bin, and then you find out it's all being dumped in landfill anyway as they can't afford the costs of recycling, even though a large portion of our very high council tax is supposed to go into this exact purpose.




Steve Wozniak - Apples Cofounder - just announced he's starting a space venture purely to clean up space junk. A cynical eye would purely look at the sale of recycled goods for profit, but there's no doubting that it's a risky endeavour that will have to stomach a big initial loss before any profits are acquired, and there are obvious good intentions in the grand scheme of things:


In my opinion, it's not realistic or helpful to aim for a true concept of "carbon zero", there is no such thing and it's not achievable. It's carbon offset that's the key, what are you doing to mitigate the carbon cost that you are expending. There's a balance in it. As with all things. Swinging too far either way is harmful.
 
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ubuysa

The BSOD Doctor
TBH it was the hypocrisy of the younger generations that I found interesting about this article. Almost everyone you meet now is urging you to 'go green'. We see adverts where they use young people to accuse us 'old un's' of ruining the planet for them, of inaction in the face of a climate disaster of our making but which will impact their lives.

Fair enough. But what are the young people of today doing about it? I don't feel any guilt for the actions of my generation when I see all the 'young un's' on mobile phones 24 hours a day, 'talking' to people who likely live in the next street! No doubt the protestors who keep blocking the M25 in the name of 'climate change' coordinate themselves via their phones and social media.

Social media is not just bad for people it's bad for the planet. And not just in the wasteful cost of upgrading one's phone every two years to get a better camera, a bigger, brighter, higher resolution screen, or a new gimmick like folding screens - none of which most people actually need (which was the crux of the article I posted).

The real problem is the cost to the environment in building and operating the data centres that serve these social media tools. They might be trying to run them in a 'carbon neutral' way as far as power consumption goes, but that ignores the cost of building the site itself and it ignores the cost of building the equipment that goes in them. And that's without mentioning the hidden costs in mining the rare earth minerals that are so essential to modern electronic equipment (and batteries) - or the decommissioning costs.

My point in posting this was because of the absurdity of younger people lambasting my generation as damaging the planet, when through their mobile phones and social media use they're damaging the planet themselves! In the 1960's we though that the idea of 'fighting for peace' was absurd. The idea that 'social media is harmless' is equally absurd. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

My generation has nothing to be proud of about the way we lived and our impact on climate change, but back then we didn't know any better. Today we all know about climate change and that one of the biggest causes has been rampant consumerism. Yet even now, when we know what the problems are, the younger people will not change their habits to help. It's much easier, and far more comforting, to moan about how stupid us 'old un's' were and pretend that you're so much more enlightened - on social media of course.
 

SpyderTracks

We love you Ukraine
TBH it was the hypocrisy of the younger generations that I found interesting about this article. Almost everyone you meet now is urging you to 'go green'. We see adverts where they use young people to accuse us 'old un's' of ruining the planet for them, of inaction in the face of a climate disaster of our making but which will impact their lives.

Fair enough. But what are the young people of today doing about it? I don't feel any guilt for the actions of my generation when I see all the 'young un's' on mobile phones 24 hours a day, 'talking' to people who likely live in the next street! No doubt the protestors who keep blocking the M25 in the name of 'climate change' coordinate themselves via their phones and social media.

Social media is not just bad for people it's bad for the planet. And not just in the wasteful cost of upgrading one's phone every two years to get a better camera, a bigger, brighter, higher resolution screen, or a new gimmick like folding screens - none of which most people actually need (which was the crux of the article I posted).

The real problem is the cost to the environment in building and operating the data centres that serve these social media tools. They might be trying to run them in a 'carbon neutral' way as far as power consumption goes, but that ignores the cost of building the site itself and it ignores the cost of building the equipment that goes in them. And that's without mentioning the hidden costs in mining the rare earth minerals that are so essential to modern electronic equipment (and batteries) - or the decommissioning costs.

My point in posting this was because of the absurdity of younger people lambasting my generation as damaging the planet, when through their mobile phones and social media use they're damaging the planet themselves! In the 1960's we though that the idea of 'fighting for peace' was absurd. The idea that 'social media is harmless' is equally absurd. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

My generation has nothing to be proud of about the way we lived and our impact on climate change, but back then we didn't know any better. Today we all know about climate change and that one of the biggest causes has been rampant consumerism. Yet even now, when we know what the problems are, the younger people will not change their habits to help. It's much easier, and far more comforting, to moan about how stupid us 'old un's' were and pretend that you're so much more enlightened - on social media of course.
Social media is pure evil no matter how you look at it.
 

Martinr36

MOST VALUED CONTRIBUTOR
TBH it was the hypocrisy of the younger generations that I found interesting about this article. Almost everyone you meet now is urging you to 'go green'. We see adverts where they use young people to accuse us 'old un's' of ruining the planet for them, of inaction in the face of a climate disaster of our making but which will impact their lives.

Fair enough. But what are the young people of today doing about it? I don't feel any guilt for the actions of my generation when I see all the 'young un's' on mobile phones 24 hours a day, 'talking' to people who likely live in the next street! No doubt the protestors who keep blocking the M25 in the name of 'climate change' coordinate themselves via their phones and social media.

Social media is not just bad for people it's bad for the planet. And not just in the wasteful cost of upgrading one's phone every two years to get a better camera, a bigger, brighter, higher resolution screen, or a new gimmick like folding screens - none of which most people actually need (which was the crux of the article I posted).

The real problem is the cost to the environment in building and operating the data centres that serve these social media tools. They might be trying to run them in a 'carbon neutral' way as far as power consumption goes, but that ignores the cost of building the site itself and it ignores the cost of building the equipment that goes in them. And that's without mentioning the hidden costs in mining the rare earth minerals that are so essential to modern electronic equipment (and batteries) - or the decommissioning costs.

My point in posting this was because of the absurdity of younger people lambasting my generation as damaging the planet, when through their mobile phones and social media use they're damaging the planet themselves! In the 1960's we though that the idea of 'fighting for peace' was absurd. The idea that 'social media is harmless' is equally absurd. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

My generation has nothing to be proud of about the way we lived and our impact on climate change, but back then we didn't know any better. Today we all know about climate change and that one of the biggest causes has been rampant consumerism. Yet even now, when we know what the problems are, the younger people will not change their habits to help. It's much easier, and far more comforting, to moan about how stupid us 'old un's' were and pretend that you're so much more enlightened - on social media of course.
Personally I think our generation was actually "greener" back then than today, with things such as:

Glass milk bottles that were returned to the dairy for reuse
Fizzy drink bottles were also returned to be reused (sometimes the same bottle was returned multiple times to get a bit of extra cash)
most food produce had very simple wrapping (a paper bag)
We used to walk the half mile to the local shops
Most families only had one car, if they had one at all
Mum grew all of our veg at home or on our allotment
At the age of 8 i used to walk 2 miles to school by myself to save my bus fare so i could spend it in the school tuck shop
 

ubuysa

The BSOD Doctor
Personally I think our generation was actually "greener" back then than today, with things such as:

Glass milk bottles that were returned to the dairy for reuse
Fizzy drink bottles were also returned to be reused (sometimes the same bottle was returned multiple times to get a bit of extra cash)
most food produce had very simple wrapping (a paper bag)
We used to walk the half mile to the local shops
Most families only had one car, if they had one at all
Mum grew all of our veg at home or on our allotment
At the age of 8 i used to walk 2 miles to school by myself to save my bus fare so i could spend it in the school tuck shop
So true.

I've just noticed, even Greta Thunberg is on Facebook. Talk about hypocrisy...!
 
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Scott

Behold The Ford Mondeo
Moderator
I'm doing my bit. I'm injecting that harmful CO2 into my lovely beer. I keep making more beer to keep trying to get rid of the CO2 but it's a tough ask.
 

Steveyg

MOST VALUED CONTRIBUTOR
Talking about Carbon Emissions is a pointless task until it's taken seriously that 72% of the entire planets global emissions are caused by 100 companies

This isn't a me you problem. Recycling is less than 1% of the battle but it's drummed into our heads that it's up to us to make the changes to save the planet. Meanwhile these same companies are the one's causing massive scale damage but no one speaks about it

We cant solve a problem if we cant tackle where the issue lies. It's not e-waste, it's gigantic container ships and massive city sized production facilities that are causing huge scale damage
 

ubuysa

The BSOD Doctor
We cant solve a problem if we cant tackle where the issue lies. It's not e-waste, it's gigantic container ships and massive city sized production facilities
But they're not the problem. The problem is the consumers who want the products made by those manufacturing plants and shipped around the world in those container ships.

As an example, you can buy 23kg bags of barbecue charcoal here at many outlets. Guess where these bags of charcoal come from?

Argentina.

How can it make sense to transport partly burnt wood halfway round the world?
 

Martinr36

MOST VALUED CONTRIBUTOR
But they're not the problem. The problem is the consumers who want the products made by those manufacturing plants and shipped around the world in those container ships.

As an example, you can buy 23kg bags of barbecue charcoal here at many outlets. Guess where these bags of charcoal come from?

Argentina.

How can it make sense to transport partly burnt wood halfway round the world?
And think of the deforestation that is possibly caused by cutting the timber to make the charcoal from..........

I read an article some years back about the journey of a recycled plastic cup used in the production of material used to make fleece lined jackets jackets, one way or another it went on about 3 round trips to China and back to West before it ended up in a shop..............
 
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