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by coldtea 965 days ago
>Nobody with money cares about e-waste. Those of us on a tight budget value our devices and lament the difficulty of repair.

People on a tight budget are more concerned about the budget impact of repairability far more than the waste too (which makes sense).

And the hundreds of millions with not so tight budget, still buy all kinds of crap, like "fast fashion" and the latest gadgetry.
1 comments
yterdy 965 days ago
I disagree. The difficulty of replacing tech changes one's relationship to one's devices. Things that I see people throw away as "e-waste" are really, "Things someone couldn't be assed to repair or repurpose." For example, broken TVs could be repurposed as large light panels (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8JrqH2oOTK4), or their main boards could be hacked for fun and profit (https://hackaday.com/2022/11/14/a-single-board-computer-from...). When I see a broken TV, even one I don't own, that's where the pain comes from. Same with phones, laptops, etc. We throw away so mny perfectly good general-purpose computers, it's insane. When we run out of a necessary resource for their manufacture, will we just be scavenging them?
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coldtea 965 days ago
>I disagree. The difficulty of replacing tech changes one's relationship to one's devices

It does, but does it stay after the budget increases? Or is it a side-effect of the budget that goes away when it's not an issue?

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yterdy 963 days ago
Please direct your attention to any instance of the vast amount of media concerning the inability of people who grew up poor to shake not only their habits but how that background makes them feel about the world. One was up for several Academy Awards last year. The answer is an unequivocal, if not necessarily universal, yes.

But that's also immaterial. That a person's feelings, thoughts, and behaviors might change when they find themselves in a different socioeconomic context doesn't make those experiences any less meaningful - to themselves or society. If personal scarcity inspires more sustainable behavior amidst an environment of eventual, absolute planetary scarcity, which can be applied more widely, all the better.

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