How to easily reduce climate change – Guide

Once the metals are extracted, they are turned into smartphones. The process begins with a manufacturing plant in China, where the raw materials are chopped and shaped into a product. The smartphone is then exported to other countries, where it is assembled and sold.

The materials that are transported to factories are refined and turned into components such as batteries, wires, logic boards and motors. The components are then transferred by fossil fuel-powered vehicles to even more factories to be assembled into complete devices.

The manufacturing process of phones is expensive for the environment, but it is only made worse by the speed with which most consumers dispose of their products. The manufacturers have made it difficult to fix the devices, and replacing them is often an easier and less expensive solution for consumers, further contributing to the already dire climate crisis.

“The greenest smartphone is the one you already own,” said Cole Stratton, an associate instructor at Indiana University Bloomington. “Smartphones seem so small and inconsequential, so unless you’ve studied supply chains and figured out everything that goes into creation [them], you really have no idea how devastating these things are for the environment.” ..

Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak is calling for laws requiring device manufacturers to release the tools, parts and repair manuals needed to allow consumers to have their products repaired by independent retailers – or to do it themselves. If consumers could repair devices more easily, advocates say, they wouldn’t have to replace them as often, reducing reliance on the resource-intensive production process and cutting down on e-waste.

The US president has instructed the Federal Trade Commission to issue rules that prevent manufacturers from imposing restrictions that make it difficult to repair devices. European regulators have implemented rules requiring manufacturers of devices like washing machines and TV monitors to make parts and repair manuals available for repairs.

The recent regulatory attention has been a necessary impetus to finally put pressure on manufacturers to make repairs more affordable, right-to-fix advocates hope.

The weather has been getting worse and worse for the past few years. Scientists worldwide have concluded that human activity is to blame for the climate crisis, and that widespread and irreversible changes have already taken place. The weather will only get worse from here on out, and there is no way to avoid it.

The Fixes Association, a coalition fighting for the right to fix, told CNN that they are seeing an increase in products they can’t recycle anymore because of the amount of waste being created. They are also seeing an increase in the amount of products that are thrown away because people can’t afford to fix them.

The production problem

The electronics industry produces a wide range of products, including televisions, radios, digital cameras and other electronic devices. It produces large amounts of waste that must be disposed of in an environmentally friendly way. The electronics industry has a significant environmental impact because it produces a wide range of products that can be used or recycled. The waste produced by the electronics industry is difficult to manage and dispose of in an environmentally friendly way.

Some companies release data that can help to paint a picture of their products. For example, the iPhone 13 has a total of 81% of its carbon emissions coming from the production process, before being transported to the factories. This data can help to show how Apple’s products are reducing emissions.

The average iPhone has a carbon footprint of about 2.5 kilograms of CO2, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. That’s about the same as a small car. But multiply that by the hundreds of millions of iPhones sold each year and add up quickly, and you get a sense of how much manufacturing new consumer electronics creates in terms of CO2 emissions.

“The device itself is only a small part of the problem,” said Stratton. “Everything that happens before it gets to you is material and energy intensive - it’s where the most greenhouse gases are emitted and where the most violent ecological transformation takes place.” ..

Some device manufacturers are working to increase the use of more sustainable materials in production. Apple, for example, highlighted at its recent product launch event the recycled aluminum and other repurposed components used in its new devices, and HP (HPQ) talked about the use of plastics that could end up in the ocean to build laptops. ..

Consumer electronics devices still rely on non-renewable metals from rare earths, which consume a lot of resources to mine and refine. This makes it difficult to replace these components with others that are more sustainable. ..

High-definition screens and other electronic devices require different materials than what is available on the market today. Some of these materials are not as environmentally friendly as others, but making a new device with these materials is still the greenest option.

The case of the right to repair

Many major device manufacturers have designed products in a way that makes them difficult to repair without specialized equipment and instructions, and have limited authorized repair shops where customers can access such repairs without compromising their device warranty. This has become increasingly true in recent years, as manufacturers use glue instead of screws to make devices smaller and lighter, but also more difficult to disassemble and reassemble. ..

Apple did not respond to a request for comment for this story. During a Congressional Judiciary Committee hearing in 2019, Apple said it controlled the repair process with respect to safety and reliability issues. Device makers also say repair restrictions help protect trade secrets and consumer privacy. But the restrictions could also turn a profit if consumers are forced to take their broken devices to licensed stores, said Gartner analyst Aapo Markkanen. And it will increase sales if consumers need to replace their devices every few years.

Gordon-Byrne said that the company has always had the right to fix its products because it has paid for them. However, the company lost this right as a partnership. ..

The advocates say these restrictions deprive the public of their right to do what they want with the products they own and hurt small repair companies who could be helping to preserve more aging devices if they could access the right resources. They argue that these restrictions harm both the public’s right to do what it wants with its products and the small repair companies who could be able to help preserve more aging devices.

The Tech Dump in Minnesota is an electronics recycling facility that also repairs and resells old devices through its store, Tech Discounts. It processes between 3 million and 4 million pounds of electronics each year, but it can only repair and resell about 10% of the devices it uses.

We have a team of brilliant technicians and they discovered how to fix things without needing the manufacturer’s repair manual. We could scale a lot faster, we could fix a lot more, if we could access repair parts and repair manuals cost-effectively.

The end of a product’s life cycle is also worrying for the environment. Manufacturers who argue against the right to repair often say that recycling outweighs the need to regularly replace devices. But experts say it’s not that simple. Reusing a product instead of constantly replacing it can save money and the environment, but it comes with some risks. For example, when a product breaks down, it can take weeks or even months for a new one to be delivered, which means users may have to wait until they run out of old products to buy new ones. Additionally, recycling products can be more difficult and time-consuming than simply buying new ones.

Basel Action Network’s founder, Jim Puckett, visited Hong Kong in 2016 to investigate the end-of-life phase of devices. He and a team tried to follow the geolocation tracking devices his organization and experts from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology had placed on 200 computers, printers, TVs and other devices. ..

The team left them at recycling and donation centers in the United States, which, he said, call themselves “ecologically correct” and “sustainable” and have “strict export control” to developing countries.

The team’s analysis of electronic devices found that about three-quarters of them ended up being sold or used in countries like Pakistan, Thailand, Mexico, the Dominican Republic and Kenya. The majority of these devices were sold to people in rural Hong Kong.

Puckett and his team found that employees carelessly dismantled e-waste in Hong Kong. Workers have broken parts like fluorescent lights used for flat-panel TVs or monitors; once damaged, these devices release invisible mercury vapor that is toxic to public health and the environment.

Dishearteningly, chasing the end of electronics life cycles can often result in horror shows. Puckett told CNN this. ..

Consumer electronics can contain metals and toxic chemicals, which makes recycling them difficult. ..

The repair advocates say both consumers and businesses should take a broader view of how we handle devices from start to finish. Manufacturers, in particular, must consider the harm that devices and their components can do to the environment when discarded.

“You have to eliminate toxicity and design things to last a long time from the start,” Puckett said.

According to a 2020 Yale study, the total mass of e-waste is decreasing as devices get smaller. However, experts fear that with the oncoming “internet of things” revolution – where everything from watches to refrigerators are becoming consumer electronics devices – the amount of waste may decrease up. ..

“The Internet of Things is scary for everyone in my work because we’re just seeing piles and piles of junk mail coming in,” said LaGrange, who has advocated the right to fix for nearly seven years. ..

The woman said that the conversation was surprising because they’re still having this conversation despite the work President Biden has done. She added that what was encouraging about his work is that we’ve known fixes have been important for years, they’ve been useful for people, for our planet, and for local jobs. However, there are still many restrictions.

Final note

Climate change is a problem that needs to be addressed. There is no way to avoid it, and there is no way to mitigate it. However, there are ways to reduce climate change without causing too much damage. This guide will show you how.