| >- Make the device last longer before it needs repair (reliability, longevity) If Apple makes devices that last so long, then how come Apple's own extended warranty program generates billions of dollars of revenue? Note that this doesn't include third party repair shops. To me, this indicates a large industry dedicated to repairing Apple products - hardly a niche industry. To me, this indicates that a large amount of Apple devices need repair, something that Apple is hostile to. Also while AppleCare is easy and convenient for the customer, Apple's "geniuses" do not do board-repair, they simply replace and throw away broken logic boards (which sometimes all they might need is a simple 10 cent capacitor). If that wasn't as bad, they actively prevent other businesses from performing component level repair by blocking access to spare parts. > I'm guessing big old servers running 24x7 are in this category: Recycling the materials into new computers takes a lot of energy, but just running the old server takes a huge amount of energy over its life compared with the newer, faster, more efficient ones you could make from the same materials. I would be surprised if not recycling was less harmful than recycling. If that was the case, then of course, we should recycle. Maybe we should have a case-by-case approach depending on specific products? I'm totally willing to go wherever the evidence leads us. As of now pretty much every single environmental organization promotes reuse over recycling for electronics. >When saying Apple should change they way they manufacture to be more like other manufacturers for environmental benefit, Apple being rated number 1 tells you that the advice is probably incorrect, I merely accepted the "number one" in good faith at face value. Digging further with a cursory Google search, things seem a lot more nuanced. That being said, I have no idea what "number one" even means without context. https://www.fastcompany.com/40561811/greenpeace-to-apple-for... |
I don't want to back the idea that Apple does make reliable or long-lived devices, although I'm very happy with my 2013 MBP still. I honestly don't know how reliable they are in practice, although they do seem to keep market value for longer than similar non-Apple devices, and they have supported them with software for a long time (my 2013 is still getting updates).
And I would love to be able to add more RAM to my 2013 MBP, which has soldered-in RAM; and I would love if it were easier to replace the battery, and if the SSD were a standard fast kind that was cheap to get replacements for, and if I could have replaced the screen due to the stuck pixel it has due to a screen coating flaw. So I'm not uncritical of the limitations that come with the device.
I'm only disputing your assertion that preventing repair and reuse of parts inevitably generates more e-waste. It's more nuanced than that.
Of course wherever and in whatever ways we can find to repair, reuse and recycle we should.
But there will always be some situations, especially with high-end technology, where repair and reuse needs more extra materials, components, embodied energy and complexity (and subtle consequences like extra weight adding to shipping costs) resulting in a net loss for the environment.
An extreme example but one that's so small we don't think of it is silicon chips. There is no benefit at all in trying to make "reusable" parts of silicon chips. The whole slab is printed in one complex, dense process. As things like dense 3D printing and processes similar to silicon manufacture but for larger object components come online, we're going to find the same factors apply to those larger objects: It's cheaper (environmentally) to grind down the old object and re-print a new one, than to print a more complex but "repairable" version of the object in the first place.