SOCIAL: Fwd: Introducing iPhone 4.

[Tom Radulovich]

I would feel better about so much of this stuff if it was recyclable  
or compostable. If computers are only supposed to last a few years,  
why not a compostable casing, like hardboard, instead of toxic beige  
plastic? Same thing with the semi-disposable furniture. What if the  
particle board furniture could be composted once the furniture fell  
apart? Coating particle board with Melamine resin precludes that.

I'd happily buy a cradle-to-cradle iPhone.

On Jun 7, 2010, at 6:55 PM, Kelly hawk wrote:

> I may be quoting out of context and misattributing... but I believe  
> one of the national leaders of the german Green party once said  
> "commerce is bad for the environment." AKA, the less we buy, the  
> better off the earth is. So the fact that my employer sells anything  
> at all is in some sense bad for the environment, even if they made  
> toilet paper from grass. But the desire for new powerful phones  
> exists, some company will fill it. It might as well be as recyclable  
> as possible.
> I think desktop computers have reached the point of diminishing  
> returns on frequent churn. I have useful PC's in my home that are  
> nearly 10 years old and will probably continue to be useful for  
> another 5 or 10 - new desktops today don't do much more than the old  
> ones. They're just faster with bigger screens, so making durable  
> desktops make sense. Someday phones will hopefully get to the same  
> place, and it will be appropriate to make cell phones that could  
> last 10-15 years. It makes no sense to make a phone that durable  
> today; technology is changing too quickly, so the extra material  
> that went into making it durable would be wasteful for the majority  
> of customers. Likewise with furniture and real wood. If you want  
> nice furniture that you'll own the rest of your life, it'll cost  
> $4,000 and it'll be hard wood (I have several such pieces, and I  
> intend to have them reupholstered until I can't see anymore).  
> Otherwise, it'll be made from cheap pressboard (which is generally  
> post-consumer waste, or at least waste the mill will have burned if  
> not for pressboard). Seems like reasonable environmental harm  
> reduction.
> -- Kelly --
>
> On Jun 7, 2010, at 5:56 PM, Erin Milnes wrote:
>
>> I had to part with my Mom’s Sunbeam mixer, as it just couldn’t  
>> cream butter anymore (it had had a good run, maybe even 35 years).  
>> Really made me sad, though -- I learned to bake with it as a girl  
>> by her side (and got to lick the batter off its beaters!). I also  
>> had to give up on my stepmother’s old ‘portable’ Singer, when it  
>> couldn’t be reliably repaired, but it, too, was probably 40 years  
>> old.
>>
>> Don’t get me started on shoes and clothing. I have dresses that are  
>> probably 40 and 50 years old and look fine, and my son has worn  
>> some of my brother’s baby clothes, which I know are 50 years old. I  
>> even have two blouses that belonged to my grandmother, who was born  
>> in 1895. They are delicate but still wearable. I have shoes and  
>> clothes that I bought as a teenager, too. Have several of my Mom’s  
>> old aprons ... the list goes on.
>>
>> And furniture... what happened to building with real wood? Press  
>> board doesn’t last, and you can’t give it away after a few years.  
>> (Sal Army will not pick up press board furniture donations.)
>>
>> The esprit de corps around keeping and reusing definitely seems to  
>> be different now than it was when I grew up and when I was a young  
>> adult. I think there’s also a bit of a West Coast thing going on  
>> (too hard to schlep antiques across the country). Maybe my family  
>> was unusual, maybe it’s a Midwestern thing, or maybe because I grew  
>> up with a grandmother who guided her family through the Depression  
>> (including dealing with losing their house), the belief that waste  
>> is sinful was instilled in me.
>>
>> There’s no doubt that obsolescence is planned into many products  
>> and plain old low-quality is the rule for most others. I like to  
>> feel the years in a tool and touch those memories when I hold it,  
>> though there’s nothing wrong with enjoying a new outfit or gadget  
>> too. It’s important to have a balance. Tom, I think your earlier  
>> caution about consumption is very on the mark.
>>
>> I’m not sure why/how the values around consumption and waste in  
>> this country have changed so much since I was a kid, but maybe we  
>> can all spiral back to less waste-creating beliefs in an even  
>> better form.
>>
>> Erin
>>
>> From: social-bounces at lists.deeptrouble.com [mailto:social-bounces at lists.deeptrouble.com 
>> ] On Behalf Of Tom Radulovich
>> Sent: Monday, June 07, 2010 5:26 PM
>> To: Social
>> Subject: Re: SOCIAL: Fwd: Introducing iPhone 4.
>>
>> After I sent this, I looked around at the dead electronics in view,  
>> and tried to imagine the tons and tons of water, oil, coal, ore,  
>> trees, etc. that went into making them, and the tons of carbon  
>> dioxide, soot, mine tailings, fly ash, hydrocarbon sludge, etc.  
>> that they left as waste; it would fill the room I am in several  
>> times over - perhaps the entire building! Sobering.
>>
>> Then I think about my aunt's KitchenAid mixer, or my grandmother's  
>> chairs, flour sifter, and rolling pin, which still serve me well  
>> although they are all older than I am.
>>
>> Some folks are thinking about designing things in very different  
>> ways. Worldchanging had an article about designing for durability  
>> and continued usefulness –  "heirloom design" which I quite liked.  
>> Think about a fine pen or a watch you can imagine leaving to your  
>> grandchildren (or grandnieces and grandnephews)
>>
>> http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/009630.html
>>
>> I imagine that at some point, technology will stabilize, and many  
>> devices will do pretty much everything you need them to do, and do  
>> it elegantly. Apple makes quite elegant products, if not  
>> particularly durable ones. Maybe one day there will be the mobile  
>> phone equivalent of the KitchenAid mixer, that will last for decades.
>>
>> On Jun 7, 2010, at 5:03 PM, Amandeep Jawa wrote:
>>
>>
>> What Tom said is how it is.
>>
>> I will only add that that is why Apple has very consciously moved  
>> to making things out of high grade aluminum and glass rather than  
>> plastic.  We have pointed out numerous times that we do this  
>> because these materials (particularly the high grade versions we  
>> use) are sought after in recycling because they are the most  
>> valuable.
>>
>> I'm not saying that is everything, but it is something.
>>
>>
>> On Jun 7, 2010, at 4:40 PM, Tom Radulovich wrote:
>>
>>
>> It's an excellent point, Palak. These machines are the product of a  
>> culture that plans in obsolescence. Even if you want to hold on to  
>> them (as I do, not necessarily out of virtue, but rather because I  
>> am cheap, and don't like to have to learn how to use new gadgets)  
>> they aren't made to last, or the company that makes them quickly  
>> stops supporting them. As I write this, I am sitting in an office  
>> with four non-working printers that need to be disposed of. I just  
>> took a bunch of mobile-phone chargers to Goodwill for electronics  
>> recycling yesterday, and was reminded of how wasteful (and  
>> expensive!) it is that every phone seems to have a unique charger –  
>> while I understand that the EU now requires that all phones sold in  
>> Europe from now on have a standard charger, it seems a way off here  
>> in the US.
>>
>> I started reading John Thackara's book, In the Bubble, which is  
>> about design. He has a great chapter on how much waste that the  
>> electronics industry generates:
>>
>> "Apart from its impact on the wider economy, information technology  
>> is heavy in itself. It's a heavy user of matter in all the hardware  
>> needed to run it. One of the hidden costs of the misnamed sillicon  
>> age is the material and energy flows involved in the manufacture  
>> and use of microchips. It takes 1.7 kilograms of materials to make  
>> a microchip with 32 megabytes of random-access memory - a total of  
>> 630 times the mass of the final product. The "fab" of a basic  
>> memory chip, and running it for the typical life span of a  
>> computer, eats up eight hundred times the chip's weight in fossil  
>> fuel. Thousands of potentially toxic chemicals are used in the  
>> manufacturing process. A single microchip is, it is true, a small  
>> thing – on its own. But there are a lot of them about – and many  
>> more to come. Promoters of ubiquitous computing promise us that  
>> trillions of smart embedded devices are on the way.
>>
>> " The ecological footprint of computing is not limited to the  
>> chips. The manufacture of electronic devices also involves highly  
>> intensive material processes. A great deal of nature has to be  
>> moved during the production of communications equipment. Many  
>> components require the use of high-grade minerals that can be  
>> obtained only through major mining operations and energy-intensive  
>> transformation processes. One of the most startling pieces of  
>> information brought to light in Paul Hawken, Amory Lovins, and  
>> Hunter Lovins' Natural Capitalism is that the amount of waste  
>> matter generated in the manufacture of a single laptop computer is  
>> close to four thousand times its weight on your lap. Fifteen to  
>> nineteen tons of energy and materials are consumed in the  
>> fabrication of one desktop computer. To compound matters: As well  
>> as being resource-greedy to make, information technology devices  
>> also have notoriously short lives. The average compact disc is used  
>> precisely once in its life, and every gram of material that goes  
>> into the consumption or production of a computer ends up rather  
>> quickly as either an emission or as solid waste. In theory,  
>> electronic products have technical service lives on the magnitude  
>> of thirty years, but thanks to ever-shorter innovation cycles, many  
>> devices are disposed of after a few years or months."
>>
>>
>> On Jun 7, 2010, at 3:55 PM, palak joshi wrote:
>>
>>
>> I am not sure if i am supposed to feel like this but I do anyway.   
>> Maybe someone will have an explanaiton that will make me feel better.
>> I do understand evolution and how things get better with  
>> time..after usage and with new technology. But i cant help but get  
>> a little upset over the fact that the iphone that i had excitedly  
>> bought a couple of years ago is now 'outdated'. It doesnt have any  
>> of the things that 4 g (right) have!
>> Am I supposed to stay committed to my existing phone (its cracked!)  
>> or go for the better one? When does one 'settle down' with a  
>> technology...does that happen when one dies or when one doesnt have  
>> any money ...and to me both sound like extreme.
>> What is the fine line between consumerism and getting excited with  
>> new technology? I have had these qustions bother me many times...I  
>> would love to talk about it if any body else feels the same way..if  
>> not i will wait around for the next topic on social  :)
>>
>> On Mon, Jun 7, 2010 at 3:47 PM, Amy Muller <amymuller at gmail.com>  
>> wrote:
>>
>>
>>
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