The other day I went for a bike ride and stopped to meet some friends at a local diner. I leaned my bike up against the wall next to our outdoor table and we chatted for an hour while I drank everyone’s water. It was hot. I have a hand-me-down GPS bicycle computer that tells me how slow I am, and when I got back to my bike, the little black-and-white screen looked like I had rabbit-punched it in frustration. That GPS may be a lying liar that under-rates my cycling speed out of pure anti-human spite, but I swear I didn’t break the thing.
This electronic contusion was an LCD sunburn, and, without getting into the details of polarizer films and reflectors, we’ll just shorthand and say that the sun cooked the screen. Some people can pull the layers of their liquid crystals apart and fix them; I could not. But I was able to buy a replacement part on eBay.
It cost $37, which is only a little less than I could shell out to get another decade-old Garmin. Factor in the time I’ll spend waiting for the part to arrive (oh my god I am riding a bike without data!) and then fixing it (four screws and a half-watched YouTube video), and you could make a decent argument that I should just buy another. Maybe I should upgrade to a model that has more functionality or better battery life. Nope. This device does what I need it to do, and I am going to fix it. If I bust it again, I will fix it again. I will break and fix and break and fix this gadget until it is no longer repairable or the satellites quit answering its calls.
The best possible thing that could happen right now is that you, having read this far, think something along the lines of, Big deal. What kind of a monster just throws away perfectly good stuff because it’s broken or old? Unfortunately, I’m pretty sure most of you aren’t thinking that. Our culture teaches us that we are what we buy, that if we don’t buy the newest new, we ourselves are the outmodes. Well, obsolete human, come join me in the junk heap, because this is the place to be—and invite your friends. Tell them to bring beer. (New beer, please.)
Why bother fixing your old busted tech? You’re here, so you probably guessed that my reason is environmental. We should all use our gadgets, appliances, and various other accessories to modern existence for as long as possible because, beyond the money it takes to buy them, every item has a cost. They cost the oil that their plastic is made from; they cost the metal that comprises their screws and solder; they cost the silicon in their chips and the silica in their glass and the diesel fuel in the logging trucks, and so on. Most of these ingredients are extracted from the earth at the cost of wilderness and clean water, and, more than we’d like to admit, human lives.
I’m not trying to shame you. All I’m saying is, treat your gear like the miracle it is. Go hug a furniture-flipper and buy a reconditioned desk instead of ordering the new one that was made from recycled material and then flat-packed in styrofoam and shipped to your doorstep from the moon.
Every item takes its toll, but the cost is especially high with new products—especially those with batteries and screens. “It’s around 250 pounds of raw materials to make a new smartphone,” says Kyle Wiens, CEO of iFixit, an online community that helps people fix their stuff. I will wait while you clean up the coffee you just shock-spit all over your screen. Two Hundred and Fifty Pounds! That means if you’ve had eight smartphones in your life, you’ve used about a ton of metal, plastic, glass, and elements you haven’t thought of since chemistry class.
Unfortunately, the tale of electronics recycling is about as true as the story of your epic college rager: Sure, it happened, but, well, you know… “You can’t take a truck full of old phones, melt them down, and make new ones,” says Wiens “Out of all the elements in the periodic table, about 50 are in a phone; of those 50, only about 12 are readily recyclable. The rest end up in the slag heap.” It would simply cost more to separate the elements from your old gadgets than it does to mine it anew. This is the case for the lithium, indium, and neodymium in your old phone, just like you can’t recycle many of the plastic items you put in the blue bin.
Beyond the extractive toll, a smartphone accrues a carbon cost, too. According to Apple’s own internal data, 81 percent of an iPhone 13’s lifetime emissions come from its production. Our use only accounts for 16 percent. What contributes to this massive carbon debt? “You have to start from first principles,” says Wiens. “What does it take to dig things out of the ground? What’s the energy cost to transport that, to manipulate it? Making silicon chips is vastly energy-intensive: You’re using X-rays to ablate material off the wafer.”
This applies to more than just phones. Running laptops, with their larger screens and burlier processors, draws significantly more power than operating your phone; yet manufacturing one still accounts for 65 percent of its lifetime emissions, according to a report from Dell. That assumes you use it for five years.
Cars, of course, have embodied carbon as well. It’s tough to pin down a number—the automaker, specific factory, location, and more all have substantial impact—but I’ve seen figures between five and 35 metric tons of CO2 before they even hit the dealership. Your water bottle is full of extracted resources and cost carbon to create; same deal with my fishing waders, which sprung a leak last weekend.
What can you do?
We all get the point now, so let’s bring it back to action. Just like altering your diet, limiting your plastic use, and switching banks, individuals can make a real impact here.
1. Use your stuff for as long as possible.
Companies like Apple will happily put you on an upgrade plan that delivers you a shiny new phone every year, and many of us take advantage of this. The average consumer replaces their cell every 2.75 years, but that number is estimated to be trending downward. Buck the damn trend. If you have a new smartphone, it probably already takes better pictures than your best digital point-and-shoot. Use that thing as long as you can. “If everyone in America were to use their phone for an extra 18 months,” says Wiens, “it’s the same as taking 700,000 cars off the road.”
2. Fix your broken tech.
This used to be the default answer to a malfunctioning device, but advances in manufacturing technology in the 80s changed everything. “CAD tooling made it much faster to spool up and change product designs,” says Wiens. “Manufacturers were able to churn out many different versions of a mechanically complex thing, and that overwhelmed the repair shops. They just couldn’t get that little sprocket or spring they needed, and Sony had like 50 models of a VCR.”
If you’re old like me, you probably remember when it was easy to find a place that would repair your TV or blender. That industry is in decline, which means you’re likely going to have to try to fix stuff yourself. I promise you that you can do this, though there are some jobs that might stump you.
Issues with circuit boards will always be tough to resolve, because they take specialized tools and expertise. Wiens, for his part, tries to buy older appliances, which are easier to repair. (“I would buy a 30 year-old washing machine.”) Some manufacturers, like Speed Queen, build with service in mind, and the very helpful subreddit Buy it for life can point you at similar products.
We have reason to be optimistic that more manufacturers will come around to Speed Queen’s way of thinking: New York governor Kathy Hochul has a recently-passed Right to Repair act on her desk that will force manufacturers to be more cooperative. (The iFixit crew was a behind-the-scenes force here, so send them a thank-you note.) More states will follow New York, and when that happens, it might kick off a repair business renaissance and public demand for products whose design takes service into account.
Until then, you’ve got this. iFixit has guides for many consumer products, and you can usually find helpful YouTube videos or communities. A group in the EU called The Restart Project hosts repair parties where more experienced DIYers help novices sort their issues. I haven’t found anything like that stateside, but if you’re nervous about fixing your phone screen or something basic like that, send me an email and we’ll hop on Zoom and get it done.
3. Repurpose your old gear.
Sometimes you do need to upgrade, but that doesn’t mean you need to ditch your old items; there are so many ways to reuse stuff. Remodeling a bathroom? That vintage bathtub could be your new planter. Wiens is currently using an old cellphone as a baby monitor. All but the most outdated smartphones can live on as kitchen timers, alarm clocks, universal remotes, wifi hotspots and more. Even using a mason jar as a water glass keeps it from the energy-intensive journey to its next life.
4. Finally: donate it to be recycled.
If you’re going to recycle your old gear—and you should, because if you throw a battery or an old appliance in the trash, Santa will never slide down your chimney again—you can donate it to nonprofits that have relationships with recyclers.
I send my old electronics to the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence. They will either have your tech refurbished or recycled—either way, they’ll get money for it, and they put that cash to very good use. It adds a layer of good to an imperfect process.
I hope you’ll try to fix the next thing you break—and not just because of the environmental impact. Getting inside your tech is fun. You get to see how your tiny modern miracles work, and sometimes you’ll even find little hand-written marks to remind you that another human built the thing you enjoyed so hard it busted. I love those tiny artifacts. They inspire me to not give up when a stubborn ribbon connector or a stripped screw makes hurling my project across the room seem more appealing than continuing to squint at an inscrutable, broken mess.
Of course, sometimes that happens. I fail all the time. But so what; I tried. Breaking something that was already broken doesn’t really set you back, but every time you succeed is a victory worth celebrating.
Take care of yourselves—and each other
Joe
joe@one5c.com