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The Internet of Trash: IoT Has a Looming E-Waste Problem (ieee.org) 79

Posted by msmash from the closer-look dept.
As we add computing and radios to more things, we're also adding to the problem of e-waste. The United Nations found that people generated 44.7 million metric tons of e-waste globally in 2016, and expects that to grow to 52.2 million metric tons by 2021. From a report: There are two issues. We're adding semiconductors to products that previously had none, and we're also shortening the life of devices as we add more computing, turning products that might last 15 years into ones that must be replaced every five years. In fact, many small connected devices such as trackers, jewelry, or wearables are designed to fail once the battery dies. At that point, the consumer tosses it out and buys another.
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The Internet of Trash: IoT Has a Looming E-Waste Problem More

The Internet of Trash: IoT Has a Looming E-Waste Problem

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  • With IOT obsolescence is a Feature, not a Bug (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 18, 2018 @03:11PM (#56634636)

    "turning products that might last 15 years into ones that must be replaced every five years."

    That's the idea.

    The reason IOT is being applied to otherwise mature technologies (Refrigerators, Ovens, Washing Machines, etc.) is to increase the purchasing cycle and design in 5-year obsolescence.

    The whole "battery is not replaceable so I have to throw it away" is a design choice based on cost, not customer demand.

    • It doesn't have to be IoT to have a short service live. I got a fridge about 18 months ago and it's already had the condenser fan go which costs $130 just for the part. I possibly could have replaced it with something generic, but trying to figure out which was going to be compatible was probably more trouble than it was worth. It used to be that a fridge would last 15 to 20 years before anything went wrong, but that time period has been going down for quite a while, and every manufacturer uses non-generi

    • I'm working on IoT that needs a 20 year battery life, but it's not consumer junk sold to people who need something to tweet about. There's really zero need for 99% of consumer IoT, it only exists so that you can show off to your friends.

    • It may seem like they want you to have to keep buying a product over and over and they build in failure, but that isn't how it works .Quality goes down when a corporation moves in, they answer to stock holders and are bound to produce profits at all cost and stock holders want returns now, not in 5 years when a customer has to buy again. In 5 years someone else will be running the company or stuck with figuring out why sales are poor. If putting plastic gears vs metal gears results in 5 cents more profit

  • APPLE to thin and to hard to repair $5000 imac pro is really bad storage locked to the T2 chip on board as well?

  • Digital controls (Score:3)

    by b0s0z0ku ( 752509 ) on Friday May 18, 2018 @03:16PM (#56634662)
    Digital controls are pretty damn reliable, if properly designed, often better than clockwork timers. Assuming the device is something like a washer/dryer that doesn't NEED wifi to run, it will work long after support is dropped by the manufacturer. It just won't be a connected device, and you won't be able to start a load of laundry in New Jersey from a cell phone in Hong Kong. No great loss.
    • Clockwork timers are pretty easy to repair/replace. It wasn't very long about that kind of "repair" was considered routine maintenance.

      An electronic controller that has tendrils throughout the produce is virtually impossible to repair aftermarket.
      • Electronic controllers in most appliances are a snap to replace. Unfortunately most manufacturers charge exorbitant fees for replacement boards. €300 - €600 for things like washing machines or central heating is not uncommon.
        • Exactly that. Which is why I specifically said aftermarket. Otherwise the fee is exorbitant if you're lucky enough to even be able to source the controller for your 5 year old appliance -- the manufacturer prefers you scrap the product so it's not always to easy to get parts. A microcontroller and small circuit board shouldn't cost more than $5-10 and the manufacturer pays a whole lot less than that.

          Instead, you're left with getting brand new appliance for $1000 or buying a microcontroller for the 5

      • On something like a washing machine it's just not an option any more with modern efficiency demands. It has to detect the load, correct for water temperature etc etc. Water and power consumption minimization requires microcontrollers.

        • Or just go with something that barely meets legal efficiency standards, like a "commercial" Speed Queen. I doubt the excess energy you use will be more than that required to build a new washer and import it from China every 3 years :D
        • This is the big joke. You say these new delicate electronic washing machines are more efficient, but is it really more efficient to have everyone buy a new washing machine every 3-5 years? I do about 2 loads a week, so 500 in 5 years. Is the environmental impact that much more efficient over 500 loads that you're still ahead after making a whole new washing machine?

          Somehow things got so twisted around that the "environmentalists" are demanding things that are horrible for the environment in the name

          • The washing machine manufacturers heard the word 'environmental' and ran with it.

            Plus, the infection of MBAs in many industries means that whole new disciplines like 'continuatiuon' or 'cost-cutting' engineers were hired on the staff.

            The goal of a continuation engineer is to reduce the cost/quality of the material in a mechanism until it is as cheap as possible but will still last the warranty period. Products that last more than several years past the warranty period are viewed as design failures by these

            • Very true. It is about what they can profit from right now. If you make a product that last a long time then that means to the bean counters that you could have designed it with cheaper parts .People think it is about getting you to buy another washer but it really is about making it as cheap as possible now. I can design a machine to last 20 years but it will cost 4x as much and consumers live in the present when they shop. Washer A on sale for $499 Washer B on sale for $1999 Both look the same on the ou
              • I agree with you, except that realistically I think it's closer to 20% more rather than 300% more. For example more robust motor is going to cost more but it's not going to affect labor costs, factory space, electricity, etc to include.

                So Washer A is $499 and lasts 5 years, Washer B is $699 and lasts 20 years while both look the same on the outside. And everyone still buys Washer A. It's a lot sadder than your example.

                Washer C is also around at $399, does a crappy job washing and lasts a year. It
          • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • What we need is the open standard equivalent of a smart hub. And sure, that hub could be designed for Google Home or Alexa or Crestron or something custom.
      Something that allows appliances to never need security updates and allows them to never need feature updates to remain compatible (or at least handle increasing security capability progressively and in a backward-compatible way). And not dependent on outside servers being maintained. The problem is a secure protocol for information and control

    • These *could* still be connected devices. There is no viable reason for them to report back to the mothership, and yet that's how these things are designed.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Mashiki ( 184564 )

      "Properly designed" being the key two words in that. The company I work for builds things that require mechanical and digital control systems for various situations(mostly high risk industry or critical infrastructure). The mechanical stuff is designed for basically any situation you can think of, from -70C to 90C temperature swings, with dust, dirt, sand, mud, rain, low humidity, high humidity and everything between because they're critical control devices. The digital stuff is pretty sturdy, but unless

      • Ran across a case while out in Alberta, where a large municipal owned community pool had a SCADA system for chlorine control, measurement, temperature control the whole 9 yards. Was sitting open on the internet, someone fucked around with it and hi-shocked the pool. Luckily the old guy who was used to the mechanical system for decades, had the habit of doing checks every morning with a kit "just to make sure." Otherwise there would have been a lot of burned 4-6 year old kids and likely their moms that morning. And that's the shit that rarely makes the news, just think of the ones that don't.

        Suffering Chlorine poisoning or getting burns from Chlorination *LITERALLY* requires there to be more chlorine in the pool than water. You can theoretically overchlorinate a pool, but...not really.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Mashiki ( 184564 )

          Suffering Chlorine poisoning or getting burns from Chlorination *LITERALLY* requires there to be more chlorine in the pool than water. You can theoretically overchlorinate a pool, but...not really.

          It literally doesn't require that. Maybe you should go read up on it a bit, and find out just how low a tolerance people have for pool chlorination. A simply chlorine shock, is enough to cause burns and blisters on people and that's roughly 2-3x the amount you normally use.

        • Except in your mouth and eyes.....it takes a lot less than that.

  • Maybe not everything needs a net connection? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Who the fuck asked for a toaster with the ability to send you a text when the toast is done?

    My grandparents bought a washing machine, a fridge, a freezer and a toaster when they got married. They used all of them until they moved into the retirement home.

    Meanwhile, everything but the fridge my wife owned when I moved in eighteen years ago has been replaced at least once, some of them (washing machine) more than once, and the cycle seems to be speeding up. Things are made cheaper, with features no one is a

    • I moved into my apartment almost 9 years ago...

      It has the (new on purchase) ...
      (1) Fridge, still working and has "digital" controls
      (2) Dishwasher, this is the old kind with a rotary dial
      (3) Gas stove -- 24" stove, not different from most other stoves, but the ignition electronics still work fine.

      My parents' house has a fancy digital stove/oven that's 15 years old and also still works well.

    • If you try to fix this problem, then you're stepping on the corporations right to make more and more profit, which is apparently god-given or something.

    • A theme for appliances is to avoid the luxury models. The volumes are lower, so the the designs are not as well wrung out, repairs are much more expensive, and they are often in designer colors that look out of date sooner.

      Get the low end ones with barely any controls in white. They will likely cost half as much, last twice as long, and cost half as much to repair if you need to do so.

      WiFi connected anything is a large negative to me these days. It will be unsupported within a year, if not by the day it

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by GuB-42 ( 2483988 )

      Your grandparents probably also paid 10 times more than you did for their stuff, once adjusted for inflation.
      Things are made cheaper because they are sold cheaper. The electronics are put in here because it is cheap, and in general people want cheap. See the theme here... They still make things that are durable for the professional market, but the prices are so high that it doesn't make economic sense for consumers.

      • If it lasts 30 years vs 3 years (i.e. is a permanent part of the house, basically), then it makes sense. No hassle of having to buy new fucking appliances and do damn shopping every few years.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by antdude ( 79039 )

      Frakkin' Cylons!

  • If you add IoT to a product, that means there's gold, copper, rare earths, etc. that should make recycling them a lot more attractive.

    Maybe the separation processes and resulting waste aren't all that great for the environment but I would think there might be a silver lining here.

    • It's not worth the effort to take apart every single junk IoT just to get a minuscule amount of materials that could be re-usable.

    • Capital required on capital gained makes it just not worth it.

      Maybe if at some point electrical power is defacto free and we have self-repairing robots with human like AI they can sift through our trash heaps and recycle everything. I'm afraid they won't have much use for us though.

    • Not so much any more. The electronics industry has gotten very good at minimising the need for those expensive minerals. Copper, certainly. But gold? Not really. The only gold you'll find in your Internet of tat is the microscopically thin wire connecting a chip die to the package. You don't get gold circuit boards any more, and you rarely even get gold-plated contacts. The minerals aren't worth the costs of separating them out.

      • +1. Most semiconductor chips (especially cheap stuff for IOT) use aluminum metallization, while higher end stuff like your CPU likely has at least partial copper metallization if high current/power density is needed. Bond wires are often gold, but aluminum and copper ones are not uncommon either. The total amount of gold in a bunch of bondwires is really really tiny too (15-20 um diameters are the norm, with usually 1mm length, about 6 ng of gold per wire, or $0.0002 of gold per wire).

        Most gold plated bo

      • "You don't get gold circuit boards any more, and you rarely even get gold-plated contacts."

        My monster cables are 24 carat pure gold, the vendor said.

    • "Maybe the separation processes and resulting waste aren't all that great for the environment but I would think there might be a silver lining here."

      You obviously meant a gold, copper and rare earth lining.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by h4x0t ( 1245872 )
      Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. (In that order)

      Recycling is one step above throwing shit in a landfill.
  • Pretty much soon you will have hardware that you subscribe to for monthly replacements..

    • You will. I'll be the crazy guy buying used stuff off of Craigslist or picking working used hardware off the curbside....

      • The point of the article is that these things are breaking, and therefore are not usable. You are welcome to pick up other people's IoT junk, but I doubt it will be very useful to you
        • No, I'll be picking up the 25 year old not-connected "junk" that some dumb sod's wife nagged them to upgrade to the latest and greatest :D
  • If there was a place I could go to and get paid for the metal weight value of the stuff I don't want anymore (like when I junk a car), that would really entice me to quit just tossing my old junk into the nearest bin.
    • At least in California, there are scrap metal places that will take things like air conditioners and heavier appliances and pay you by metal weight.

      • Your going to have to separate the metals. Not worth the effort. Just put the junk on the curb and let the tweakers fight over it.

        • There are (or were) places in San Diego that paid by the pound for entire appliances like A/C units or dishwashers. Bring the appliance, show some ID to deter thieves from cashing in metal, get paid cash. It was only like $10-20, but it was more than zero.

          • Those are places run by scrappers (tweakers), they take the metal to the actual recycling places.

            After burning off the non-metal parts, then separating the metals. Dirty as fuck, but 'poors' so they get away with it.

            Nobody really cares if they poison their kids and neighbors, the neighbors should.

            • I doubt they burnt anything off -- burning plastic would be noticed in San Diego and would probably attract attention. Unless they took the stuff into Mexico or somewhere in the desert, of course. But, AFAIK, they were actually recommended by the city as a way of disposing large appliances, so they must have had some kind of license.

  • Wireless handphones anyone? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Jason1729 ( 561790 ) on Friday May 18, 2018 @03:37PM (#56634800)
    I just wonder what's going to happen when all the people spending $300-500 on wireless headphones find out they have a glued-in non-replacable battery that will turn their expensive "investment" into landfill within about 3 years.

    It's an environmental nightmare, but will they go out and repeat the same mistake for another $300-500 or realize a wire isn't all that bad a lot of the time?

    • eh, these are the people buying $500+ cell phones with same issue, they don't care

      • That's a good point, but even for those people, they feel like the three year newer phone if the new latest and greatest and they're not replacing it so much for the new battery as for the new shiny.

        Even bluetooth noise cancelling headphones just don't change that much in 3 years to justify spending another $500 to replace, and Bose at least says a dead battery requires a flat rate "out of warranty repair" that is more expensive than the actual street price of the headphones. At least Apple will replac

  • Who are these "we"? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    "As we add computing and radios to more things"

    *I* sure as fucking hell don't do any such thing. Stop saying "we".

  • Warranty period too short (Score:5, Insightful)

    by fluffernutter ( 1411889 ) on Friday May 18, 2018 @03:48PM (#56634868)
    The solution is simple, double the mandated warranty period. Let companies worry about keeping the products working for that long, and while some people will choose to replace before the warranty is up, they will be useful longer to the next owner. Less will get thrown out.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Luthair ( 847766 )
      In some jurisdictions there is the notion of a legal warranty where the length also varies by the type of product. e.g. people have a reasonable expectation that fridges last a long time.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by illtud ( 115152 )

        Such as the EU. Brexit will leave the UK outside of this, and pressure for trade deals will sacrifice those kinds of protections that a large market can demand. The UK will diminish, and have to accept lower consumer protection, affecting consumer rights and leading to environmental impacts. What a ridiculous sacrifice on an altar of platitudinous "taking back control".

    • Having managed a warranty repair center I can tell you this will not work. Companies will do what we were told to do, put your returned product on the shelf and let it sit there until you either give up on expecting it back or we tell you that it doesn't fall under warranty for reason xxxx.
  • Most of IoT devices don't need to be IoT in the first place, but of course marketing people (and their shills, of which there are many) convince people that they 'need' these things for 'reasons'. Anyone with a functioning ability to reason can see that 99% of them are pointless complexity added to things that don't need them and really don't provide any benefit.
    • B-bu-but, you can start your machine when you're 1000 miles away, after the magic elves load it with clothes.
  • The type of trash the UN is made up of is much more damaging to the Earth than old Amazon kindles.
  • I think we're at the point of a recycling tax for e-waste. That is, not only does their purchase incur a sales tax but also a recycling tax, so that when the item is recycled (mandated by law), funds have been set aside for their handling/recycling, and/or the person who turns it in gets a return deposit, perhaps.

    Also, I'm still waiting to hear about a very useful IoT device that didn't exist 5 years ago. Whenever I hear someone rave about some new purchase, I poke a hole in it within a minute when we

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