You clearly don't understand why scale matters. It's not a "just cause we like big things", its because economically it becomes more efficient. I guess we cannot expect designers to know much though.

Scale is literally a massive factor in bringing down the environmental impact of individual objects, and it's also the only way to provide for 7+ billion people

They not subcontracting because of overload, it is obfuscation and price reduction.

@めぐみんじゃない I think you misunderstood my point. Growth and scale helps with efficiency....but growth at all costs is when we run into the problems we have right now.

There was loads of problem with the lead free solder in the beginning. But most of them was eventually solved, and today its relatively problem free. Most of the problem was an effect of that old components was med to be soldered with lead based solder and when they switched over there was galvanic reactions that lead to brittle joints and whisker. This was back 15 years ago, i have not seen much problem later.

That and the God forsaken plastic air packs they stuff the boxes with

How would you replace it?

@@Blubatt you could mark packaging more sustainably with things like ink stamps, paper stickers, punch-outs in the cardboard, etc. you’d have to find the most permanent solution for bad weather and such but there are alternatives.

@@Blubatt Adhesive and paper that peels off in one piece, or is itself recyclable. Ordinary paper printed on with ink instead of thermal paper would be one option, with a starch based adhesive. That would be recyclable along with the cardboard

Actually, cardboard is NOT one of the materials with the best recycling rates. It is NOT suistainable 1.) If you've ever made paper, you know that pulp loses rigidity upon re-utilisation. Its reutilisation is equivelant to the types of plastic that are able to be recycled (7 times). the fact that plastics and paper can only be used so many times is important. essentially, it's like chromosomal or DNA damage during cell division. There are only so many times you can split the bonds of the material (pulp or plastic) before it ceases to have viable properties to complete the process. The number of times is laughably low at around 7 to 10 times. Meanwhile, you need to use new material, with the recycled material for both plastics and cardboard to increase strength. so, new material is always necessary. the ratio is usually 10% recycled material to 90% virgin: but they slap a made from recycled materials lable on it and everyone swoons. This is even more annoying because the US passed a law that requires companies to add 10 percent recycled plastics to all new plastics when possible. AGH, it's just like those annoying car companies that say "carbon neutral by 2030". Uh, yeah, thanks FORD/ CHEVY : are you going to mention that this is ONLY because this is when a law will be enacted leveraging crazy taxes on you if you haven't met this goal? Cool, thanks for greenwashing you corporate slugs. it is NOT a solution. 2.) Soggy carboard and paper weakens the material, and most recycling centers will just throw it away because it is 'soiled' at this point. Anytime you've left you recycling out in the rain, or tried to recycle a pizza box, or spilled the contents of a bottle that you were also recycling onto the cardboard: it is then trash. There's a lot of misinformation and misunderstandings surrounding recycling. Stay vigilent, and choose better options. Better options? Aluminun, steel, glass: they have basically no limit to the number of times they can be re-used because the material itself is maliable: not their binders or fragile reordering of their molicules like paper and plastic. Fun fact: Ceramics are not recyclable.

The biggest sector thar can actually tremendously benefit from reusing it's packaging is cosmetic industry. The amount of plastic they produce. Is mind blowing. I run out of chapstick within 2-3 months. Wished there was refill outlets at their store. This will also reduce the cost for the customer. There should be a mandatory law in every country that every whether big or small cosmetic company needs to take back their empty bottles and also hv refill station.

I lived in Matamoros, Mexico for 7 years and they have a lot of returnable glass and plastic bottles.

This kind of deposit-return scheme works really well in Germany. You get the money back with supermarket coupons once you return the bottles and if you can't be bothered to return it, someone who needs the money can return the bottle themselves for coupons. such incentives work well for plastic bottles too, especially the larger ones that come in cases which can be returned and cleaned. I wish they had this kind of scheme in other countries!

my mum told me they used to ask you to return bottles idk why they'd stop (i do, it was probably for more money) :/

I know how well dishes are "cleaned" in restaurants. You how many people stick these things up to their asses?🤌 And I'm not ready to pay x2 for the bottles and walk extra weight home. 😒 I'm ok with the plastic ones.

Thyas why I don't buy from Apple. They are greenwashing to hide the fact they don't care and because it's" trendy". It's like the hp commercial where they say they plant trees while promoting the use of paper . They could say print on both sides to reduce paper waste. Instead they don't.

Aren't they the most hypocritical tech brand at this point? Almost everything they say is a lie. I still remember them removing jack because it "didn't fit". And making tons of decisions due to "courage", while products get worse and worse. They only have courage to tell blatant lies to masses.

I always hated apple for their products but wow apple is litterally killing us all

Apple: We removed the charger from the box cuz everyone already has one. Also Apple gives a c to light ing cable with the phone which doesnt fit the charging bricks everyone already had so ppl got a useless cable or they bought a new charger in its own seperate box in a plastic sleeve

Also quoting high prices for replacement parts is a common practice ti make people say "It makes more sense to buy a new phone instead of paying this much for just a screen change."

the US offers tax breaks and other positive incentives for businesses that “go green”. hasn’t seemed to do much in regards to the big companies who are really running the game. i believe the next logical step is to punish them on top of incentivizing them for a double whammy lol

@@shelbydan Its not like your idea disagrees with krisha its just that you guys are talking about different things. Mexico city was trying to manipulate behaviour of citizens and youre referencing the behaviour of companies. While it makes sense to punish companies for avoiding or breaking regulations citizens are sort of the opposite under our law. We make laws so that companies will operate in certain ways, laws for citizens are so that they WONT operate in those ways and in that sense the negative enforcement idea makes sense. Just ask yourself: Has the threat of being ticketed stopped people from speeding in their cars?

@@shelbydan how do you punish them without hurting consumers. Raising taxes will only raise the price of products and the company will have no punishment while the consumer suffers. Especially if that product has some level of inelastic demand.

@@stepb2788 You can't. People will eventually have to accept that their favorite crappy consumable isn't affordable anymore. One way or another.

@@zachweyrauch2988 It might, if they were pulled over and ticketed instead of getting the ticket in the mail weeks later when the incident is long forgotten. ie: If we had police ticket people instead of cameras.

I am a major pro-right to repair guy, a really awful example is REDCINEMA camera battery packs with the BMS program in ram. I cannot wait for the right to repair being fully pushed through.

Agreed, the whole system is f'd and I don't mean "right to repair" I mean our whole system of profit above all else, this is why the world is coming to an end and we're so far down the road we can't turn back, we have one option and one option only, we have to replace the pursuit of wealth and power with the pursuit of knowledge and experience. People like to learn, and a country only hurts itself by making education cost the student. We made education through to high-school not only free but compulsory, it's time to do the same with college. we can't learn from our mistakes and make corrections if we cannot guarantee the right to learn, not to mention, having freely available knowledge that anyone can access as long as they live makes right to repair more useful, I mean, this way people have a place to go to learn HOW to repair their stuff, if they don't want to/can't afford to have someone else do it.

stuff like this reminds me that one day about 100 years ago, every lightbulb company came together and decided there was a max amount of years they're products could last to maintain their customer base.

@@ErieRosewood welcome to capitalism

@@smileyp4535 Capitalism just means freedom. Don't blame freedom. Freedom is more important than the planet anyway. Blame the fricked up society that abuses the freedom. Regulation has never changed minds in human history. if we wanna change the world, change hearts. Also, government make up the majority of this garbage and waste worldwide. Do you really think giving them regulatory power would solve anything?

Sadly we only have 2 decades and not 2 generations “The IPCC report 2022 warned that the world is set to reach the 1.5ºC level within the next two decades and said that only the most drastic cuts in carbon emissions from now would help prevent an environmental disaster.”

@@p_a_t_h6237 unfortunately, warnings such as that don’t work anymore. Decades ago, scientists and environmentalists warned that the world would be gone by now. Since those events never came to pass, this is very much a “boy who cried wolf” situation. When it comes time to when these predictions are right, no one will believe them.

@@jdpower9032 I believe them right now because we have been seeing the effects of climate change and global warming, there isn't much time. The world is like a person with ADHD (i have ADHD) waiting and not doing anything because it's just fine and then only acting once it is too late. Because it didn't feel like there was an emergency. But there is!

The planet is not use & throw - and it will be just too late when we truly realize this.

People who are environmentally conscious also do not understand that it is multiple time better for the environment to reduce consumption than to recycle / repurpose. The amount of crap that we buy and hoard in our homes today is mind-boggling.

And the fact they can’t simply stop is the main problem as it would down there reputation even tho it would be better to simply pull out

Eat the rich

@@TheGallantDrake I agree. You'd be tasty with some pepper jack

This is why you shouldn't buy Nestlé products. They're often worse than the Alternatives for the Consumer. I still don't get why People buy their Crap.

And also the paper straw is still wrapped in plastic (at least where i live)

I agree, but... Hit these companies and they'll do two things put up prices and cut jobs to preserve their profits. That will have consequences, look at the US and 2016. Look at China and pollution, they're the worst polluter but with CO2 China emits less per head than the US. Does China stop growing or does the US activity reduce consumption (e.g. put up fuel prices to make fuel efficient cars popular) neither will be popular in their respective countries.

That's completely true but there's a reason that hasn't happened sufficiently. Capitalism allows unlimited wealth accumulation, which allows unlimited political power (because wealth will always buy power). So anytime we have massive wealth building up in the hands of a few people, they are going to be able to use their money to sidestep democratic processes and bribe politicians to not implement those regulations. Mega wealth also allows the purchasing of major media organisations and education establishments in order to churn out pro-free market, anti-regulation propaganda which also corrupts the democratic process by misinforming the public. We will never be able to regulate these corporations and individuals out of their damaging behaviours. As a species we have to learn that excessive wealth accumulation is the biggest existential threat to our species and we must put a stop to it. And sadly that cannot be achieved peacefully.

How can any form of mineral extraction not produce waste? That’s like asking households not to produce trash. Concentrating minerals from a diffuse ore body into a monolithic pure metal Ingot is literally the process of separating valuables from waste.

@@Bloated_Tony_Danza this is not whats being argued and you may have missed the point

@@Bloated_Tony_Danza the issue is that they have managed to get off with ignoring the waste they create entirely. I live in Alberta and the oil companies here have created tailings ponds (waste sludge from the oil sands extraction process), that hold some 1.3 billion cubic meters of liquid that contains all kinds of toxins. There's a dam that's 18km long holding it all in. The Government has only recently begun making them figure out ways to treat the water and make it safe again. The only reason a lot of these businesses are profitable at all is because they're allowed to completely ignore the environment.

Because electricity is actually one of the biggest causers of pollution in the world

@@supermasterfighter You're going to be pissed when you find out how much of that electricity gets used to make things that further pollute. I really don't get you people - do you think plastic, oil, gasoline, and other big pollution problems aren't created in part by using electricity? Do you think electricity is only used to charge electric car batteries? Are you really this stupid?

@@supermasterfighter Right, but without it we'd be setting ourselves waaaaaaay back technologically.

@@supermasterfighter All things considered, fossil fuels are even worse

@@MJ-uk6lu Oh no doubt, but electrical cars are not the answer. Better public transportation and human powered vehicles are the answer. Some people have tried to make the argument of "well electrical cars can be self driving and stuff, they can ferry more than one group of people around" and I have to say this: what prevents regular cars from doing the same thing? They both pollute the atmosphere equally, one just uses petrol and the other uses coal.

This reminds me, I had red leather boots when I was a teenager, the zipper broke and my then Bf took the shoes to a cobbler. The first cobbler said "there is no way I can fix it, look at the bottom, it's all broken. It is gonna look so ugly if I do this, and that....and as the price 80€" Well, my bf decided to take the shoes to another cobbler, who said "I can't put a new zipper, since the leather is very worn, however, I can sew a leather piece inside the shoe, and close the area of the zipper completely. Then you just have to open the laces completely, to put it on. 15€ for one shoe!" Well, it is easy to guess wich cobbler fixed my favorite shoes :(. It seemed like the first one did not even want to touch my shoes, even tough, in fact yes they were worn out, but still very usable.

I'm in the same position right now and it's just genuinely very hard and very expensive for a small shop unless a customer is willing to pay more, which too many aren't. I hope there is a better solution for us in the near future as I need to make the money to live but feel awful for not being able to be more eco-friendly about it.

Can you do a stamp and pad of ink instead of stickers? Takes longer but more sustainable..

@@ah5721 This! Stamps are a cheaper solution too

Sell local-only? Like farmer's markets and direct to store? Then you can choose the tytpe of impact, like just driving your car to the places but know that the package is simple and good. Even better would be to ride an ebike to deliver the goods powered by a small solar array and a body fed by a garden, that'd be a super light impact. When you participate in the shipping market most everything is out of your control and subject to the optimazation forces of industry itself. Only way to escape that is to go small and simple and local. At least unless we get star trek replicators that can perfectly recycle matter and limitless energy to do it all with.

I totally agree! We need to work to shift our consumer mindset, and the best way to do it is to start on an individual scale with our own choices.

THIS or used

@VaderxG The double comments and device justification with the added "you sound like you cause issues because your phone is old" kind of sounds like some major copium, my dude.

We do but its no good if the product is desinged to fail.

I would love to NOT having to replace my mobile device any time soon, but companies don't like that mindset and will try to make you buy a new device one way or another. At least with clothes I can wear them until they consist of more holes than fabric. xD

lol

Not too far from Walmarts procedure for loading trailers, they will also let you go for asinine reasons when demand drops.

Wally world retails the most out of any retailer. My sister's experience at her store made me cautious to apply to our local Walmart. The sucky thing is that it's the closest business to the neighborhood so it would have been very convenient to work there.

yeah, they were getting TO that point when I left last year, glad I left when I did

As a former stocker, I absolutely loved how full length mirrors always came out with paint cans stacked on top of them. Nothing like sending merchandise all the way from China just to open it in the store, noting fractures in the middle of every single pane, and sending it off to claims for disposal, on top of the literal tons of cardboard and plastic packing material a single store generates per day.

They don't produce much Co2 but because international waters, they use the cheapest fuel they can, dumping shit tons of toxic exhaust

@@someweeb3650 That is not how international waters work. While in international waters, the ship follows the laws of the country whose flag it is sailing under, and when it leaves international waters, it follows the laws of the country in whose territory it operates, therefore, it's more down to a lack of regulation than to a lack of regulatory facilities.

Fair enough, thanks for the nuanced perspective. I haven't done research on the efficiency of cargo ships to comment much more than I already have in the video. However I would still argue that localized manufacturing, in addition a combination of several other factors, is a good direction to move towards.

@@Chrischi3TutorialLPs congrats on missing the point

@@Rokomarn How did i miss the point, exactly? What i was saying is that, when you want to become more sustainable, you need to start at the place that causes the most damage and is cheapest to fix. Making marine shipping CO2 neutral for the comparatively tiny amount of CO2 that saves in the transport line, when the trucks transporting these goods from the harbor to the inland cities demanding them produces orders of magnitude more CO2 per kilo than the ship that transported these goods across an entire ocean to begin with, especially considering that electric trains are theoretically carbon neutral if driven with renewables, is pretty much the opposite of minimum effort for maximum effectiveness.

I think a good way to address (part) of this is to also bring back the skills of fixing and mending your possessions. For example, my brother in law throws out his socks when he gets a hole in them and just buys new ones. I sew mine up a few times, until they are genuinely beyond repair. This doesn't take much time or even a lot of skill - I remember doing this since I was very little. My mum had a basket where we would put clothing in need of small repairs and we would just go through it when watching TV etc. It takes my family years and years to wear down an article of clothing because I put the effort to maintain out clothes, but that's because I know how and I care. Contrast that with companies like SHEIN, which use slave labour to mass produce plastic garments meant to be work a few times and thrown out. Of course the average person won't be able to fix the electronic components of a phone, although there are other solutions possible too - e.g. getting a simple loan phone while yours is in the shop, like with cars. That requires input by the repair companies though, which is unlikely to happen soon.

@@YumeOUtau This is a decent solution, but you also have to remember that it wasn't necessary until a few years ago, because in many parts of the world places existed locally where you could get your things fixed for cheap. Unfortunately, with how companies have been, and with covid, and a whole lot of other things, those places are a rarity now, while skills like you mention aren't realistic for everybody to have. I do like fixing things myself, though more on the mechanical side than garment side of things, but I'm neither great nor quick at it, and it's more of a physical limitation than lack of knowledge or willingness to learn. Another thing is that the purchase of good quality materials and tools for any kind of work like this, while usually spread out and helpful in saving you a lot of money in the long run, are still purchases, which deters a lot of us. In the end, I stand by my opinion that local businesses for repairing everyday items are the best solution. And that last part is why I decided to swap out my last phone frankly a while ahead of its time. I have it around, lying in wait, ready to fill in for this one, should anything happen to it. But... yeah, it's really not very fair to say that we should be responsible for everything. Big companies are the ones that create ecosystems where it's not feasible to have your belongings repaired, both through various practices like locking down software and hardware or making parts unavailable, and through their market practices that drive the places that used to perform the repairs out of business.

We need to revive the good local tailor shops. If my jacket is torn and a local tailor can patch it in a less than a day with halve the cost of buying a new one then I would go there 10/10

@@ofrund Half is generous, I've had some of my belongings repaired for fractions of the original product cost, even though I was more than willing to pay way more than I did. And yet these places are increasingly rare...

That’s true but I broke both phones I had last year and I’ve been waiting to get them repaired. I’ve missed many important calls bc of this but I’m still waiting until I can afford to fix them bc I have bigger issues like rent and food. It would be convenient to buy a second hand one for £50 but I’d rather pay out to get one of these fixed at a time. Idk if what I said made sense or was relevant but I agree with you for the most part

This is very possible.

something i think is interesting about that example, is it really better for the environment for you to send your old item back to them for repair or for them to just send you a new one and for you to more or less dispose of the item? (sending it to some sort of 2nd hand store most likely) that's a lot of transporting an item around if you don't like use of diesel fuel. personally I'm more of the type to hang on to something until it's not fit for purpose and can't be repaired back to being fit for purpose, I have a nice zip up sweater that is something like 10 years old and i still like it more then the new one that was meant to replace it from the same brand, partly because i just like that old comfy sweater.

Even if it becomes popular, Patagonia-style repair program is dubious in nature to begin with. For an eco friendly clothing repair program to be sensible, I think you would need to sell/donate used clothes to the program, which will repair it and then resell it to a different person. In other words, it needs to be a refurbishment process rather than repair. Why? Shipping in bulk, bulk processing, and shipping to stores is much more efficient and eco friendly than shipping individual items from person to repair factory back to the person. If every article of clothing need to return to the same owner, every step of the process becomes much more complicated and expensive as the article needs to be tracked on every step. With bulk processing they can just be thrown into a pile and sorted and processed in bulk, which simplifies handling. I think a refurbishment would also be much more acceptable to people. For the new owner, they will still feel like buying new clothes, just cheaper than buying new. Many people are already used to the idea of thrift shopping, it just needs to become more common. For the previous owner, they can just dispose of their clothing as usual, and they can still vary the clothes they wear over the years, and they can swap out clothes that no longer fit instead of getting back the same article of clothing which may no longer fit the same way when they were originally bought. The only problem? The fashion industry, which sets a certain fashion trend every year and every season, and which makes certain styles of clothing look dated and artificially makes people feel that they need to buy new clothes to keep up with the latest fashion. Fashion needs to stop, manufacturers should standardise cloth designs into fewer designs, to make it easier to build repair automations, and to make it easier to swap out parts between clothes.

@@ARockRaider I'm sure it depends on many factors, but that new product you buy has to be transported from the factory, to the distribution center, to your house. And there are even more steps depending on where you purchase. In all cases, your jacket will be in a truck with other products either way.

@@yvrelna that sounds like a large scale version of the secondhand clothing market here. Clothes are sent to non profits who sell used items Some people buy and fix designer stuff, usually it’s something mild like a broken zip. They mail or sell it in person. Still lots of clothes are binned/sent off to Africa for “recycling” maybe? Not everything is worth ♻️

What was wrong with your jacket?

@@weaponsgradepotato small .5 inch tears near both side pocket zippers. Main zipper had one missing tooth. Not sure if they even noticed, and did not ask to repair this, but if you held it up to light, inside insulation was pulled free from bottom, so bottom 1 inch or so wasn't as insulated as it should have been. At a glance, jacket still looked almost new.

Isnt that something you could fix yourself? It sounds fixable.. or at least not like a big enough issue to throw something out for..

@@mikado_m If I had a sewing machine, a replacement zipper, and the time and knowledge to do it, sure. But I don't, that is why I opted for their program. When I boxed it up to send, I had to pick either "Get item sent back" or "Get Merchandise Credit" if item deemed not repairable. Around 6 weeks later, they told me it was unrepairable and sent me a credit.

@@dividebyzero1000 I am Interested to know if there is an option to get the item back as is if its considered unrepairable or if there is more repair options, because I would definitely still wear something that has a bit of damage or try to repair it myself.

Where does it go though? Into the air for someone to breath and get cancer down the line?

The reason it's such a problem is because it gets into groundwater when the devices get thrown in the garbage (or the air if they're incinerated). It also pollutes any recycling facility and threatens the workers there. It's not a problem when it's in use, but it's a problem when the use is over.

@@mrbombastikalime9867 that's the thing, though, lead solder once set doesn't go ANYWHERE. Not for like 200 years. circuit boards today are constructed by machines, so no human even touches them until it's time to test them usually, and even when you melt the solder, it's at such a low temp that the lead cannot vaporize. There's no damage in using it. In fact, the fumes from the FLUX are far more damaging. Also, recycling lead is actually very very easy, and can be done as part of the process they do when recovering gold from PCBs.

i mean even if the time it took to get places was lower, public transport in mexico city (and most of mexico really) has a reputation for being unsafe. going on one with a bag of any kind is treated as basically asking to get robbed. I live in the north of mexico far away from CDMX and ive only been on public transit twice, once we got mugged and the other the bus driver must've been on something because he was going like 120 on a 30 and taking sharp turns. both times i felt like i was looking death right in the eye hahaha.

South England is very well connected in terms of public transport. It's much quicker for me to get the train to school than drive. It's great! And nobody living in London uses a car. Not saying the UK's the best country- I have many problems with it, but this is one thing they've done right. I just wish the North wasn't so deprived.

That's not terribly unique issue. I live in Kaunas and I had to commute every day for almost 4 hours to both directions to get to university by buses. With car that was just 40 minutes if not less.Public transport is almost universally shit, unless you make it uneconomical, but that's kinda the whole point of it.

​@@MJ-uk6lu hearing about public transport all over the world makes me sad. where I live it's better for me (personally) to take a bus, when I was going to school it was even quicker than the car and I had an extra 20 minutes of sleep

@@eggi4443 It's not great. I also had some crappy locations where buses were infrequent, even if those locations were quite popular. If you miss a bus near botanical garden, then you will wait 40-50 minutes until next one. You can walk to better stop, but it's so far that it takes about that much to get there. I tried that once and was a tiny bit too slow so I missed a bus and ended up being even slower. Also there was bus stop near my old university building, but there were two routes that could take me close to home. It was also near one of the biggest malls in this city and still, it's 20 minute wait and then around 10 minute walk after ride. I can actually walk home from that place in 50 minutes and be only marginally slower than bus. So yeah, some stops are just cursed and waiting time is insane. Only some routes are actually frequent and thankfully I live very close to frequently driven bus stops. If I lived somewhere else in this city, then it would be hell of waiting long for bus and arriving nowhere near home. At least I can get fast to hospital with bus and this year I'm attending different university and bus ride will be like 10-15 minutes with 5-10 minute wait. That's glorious. Just that with car it would still be much faster. 5 minutes and you are there.

that is not quite the full troth. The recycle rate of lead-acid battery is like 99.9+%, for electronics its way lower.

Lead bad

@@matsv201 yes, because we dont design with recycling in mind. We only think of immediate selling profits, and being wasteful is actually profitable thing to do.

@@heyhoe168 It really depends on what you are talking about. Cars are typically 98% recyclable. The ironic part is that this number is much lower for electric cars (typically 85-90%). For electronics its really the board and the circuits that is not recycled. And its really not that strange. They are basically made out of sand. Of cause, if you run it in a plasma oven, you can sort of get the sand back as well. Its strange that plasma ovens are more common, they pretty much solve the recycle problem.

@@heyhoe168 that's just not true at all, some things are simply un-recyclable. PCBs are impossible to break down and re-use. The cost of pulling out metals like gold from electronics is too costly due to the complexity. If there were an incentive to create easy to recycle electronics ie. Cheaper to use metals from old electronics than newly refined metals it would already exist.

Right? My city has a recycling program.... but even if I sort my trash into my apartment building's recycling bin it's all dumped in the trash truck together. I could go to a recycling center to put my sorted trash in, but after already realizing that my choice was an illusion, it's hard to trust that my extra efforts won't have the same results. And of course, it's hard to find information on what happens after they pick it up other than hollow assurances that it'll definitely be recycled.

@@PokemonTrainerAriel Totally true..At my school we have recycle bins but I found out they're just dumped with the rest of the trash anyways, so even if you think or feel like you're helping you aren't.

Like the Hewitt Packard printer ad

While there is an argument that can be made for a more sustainable mindset, the mostly negative tail of the industrial revolution and the current industrial problems glosses over the implications of the industrial revolution not happening. The two important facts to understand are that humans on average would like to work 4-6 hrs a day with 6-10 hrs of social time and, two, the current population of the world would be reduced by 30-40% if there were no industrial agriculture, which itself is a cutting edge product of the current industrial system. These are important because after the invention of stationary farming the workday went from 4 hrs to 14 hrs. The return to the 4 hr workday has been a constant pressure on humanity for the last 10,000 years pushing for new technologies and the exploitation of new resources. The vast majority of the world population in the 1600's, 1700's, 1800's and very early 1900's lived and died in small farming communities from work accidents, illness and violent conflict. The factory system offered an opportunity for the next generation to get off the farm and for many it actually worked. It wasn't only the malevolent force of greed that drove growth. It was also a dream of humanity's children working less.

@@ianbelanger7459 That's a really interesting comment! Thanks! I think one of the most crucial and challenging parts of moving towards a more sustainable world is in finding a way to cut jobs in unsustainable and wasteful sectors and funnelling those workers into filling the gaps left by shortening shifts in more essential sectors without treating it as an economic catastrophe (and without it becoming an economic catastrophe!). There are so many jobs that from both an objective-based and production-based standpoint are completely pointless, and literally only exist to pay a wage or to produce a return on investment without actually producing anything of real value - either just juggling money around, or producing e-waste for the sake of producing e-waste. If we had universal basic incomes and/or much more comprehensive social services, these jobs would no longer be necessary, and it would free up a massive section of the workforce while giving them the financial stability to take the time to retrain and fill gaps in more essential industries, such as sustainable agriculture, healthcare, and education. The problem is achieving this without causing an economic collapse. There's enough money and resources in the system, but due to the way the stock market currently works any major redistribution of resources and culling of non-essential industries WILL be seen as a contraction of the market, which could easily cause panic selling of stocks and shares resulting in an unnecessary economic crash. The key thing is finding a way of ensuring stability and trust while transitioning to what would essentially be an entirely reshaped economy. That being said, I'm not an economist so I don't know how to do that 😅

@@BambiTrout while categorizing some sectors as unsustainable or wasteful is a little harsh, the general idea that there are enough resources, but they are currently very poorly allocated and inefficiently used is spot on. It is also true that the actual changes needed to achieve a sustainable world are many, but conveniently an individuals doesn't have to solve the problem for everyone. One of the major advantages of a market based system is that it responds rapidly to profit pressure. This is because when pressure is placed on a market all the people participating or thinking about participating begin to look for ways to profit from the new condition. As a populous, we simply have to organize around actions and policies that apply that pressure. It is not easy to organize a community or national campaign, but it is far easier to make doing the right thing profitable than developing all the systems and processes to actually achieve those profits.

While that is partly true, over 25% of emissions are food-related and near 75% are electricity and transport related, not unnecessary consumption.

@@ianbelanger7459 then why don't we push to the 4h work day anymore?

Absolutely! how can anyone expect people to make sustainable choices when they are being threatened with having their entire livelihood tossed away by the system that is destroying the earth! it seems obvious to me that the central force that is responsible it the capitalist profit incentive

this. designers aren't the ones responsible. most designers are following higher-ups requests

Yep, that. I've been cycling in and out of making efforts towards living a more sustainable life for years, because of that. It's so complicated and it never feels, like your're doing enough anyway. It takes an immense amount of willpower ans dedication, to just say 'screw it, I got enough problems' and just go live your life.

Damn son. Very very relatable

At least you can do the minimum. A friend said: "I buy Nestle. Cause the other ones are for sure not better." Yes, but at least avoid those you know are bad. Like if you could easily walk the lit street as much as the dark alleyway, then just walk the street. Even though you could also be robbed on the street. It is really not hard doing at least a little bit. As it is not hard for those effing mother***ers to drop their garbage into the bin than onto the beach. Gosh darn it. Humans are so friggin lazy. I am for sure not wasting my whole vacation picking up trash. But when I swim into something, I am gonna pick it up. Even if the trash lands into the ocean either way, cause governments dispose of it like that. At least it isn't 100% surely in the ocean.

It's good that it hurts, at least you are still able to feel compassion towards your fellow humans.

Sometimes it does seem the only way to be sustainable is to be miserable. To live a stunted, unfulfilling existence without many of the joys the modern world allows us to experience, from the tropical vacation, to, as you say, the simple candy bar. It's the "hair shirt" mentality.

Lead solder is still available at a hobbyist level, I have a roll sitting right inside my desk.

I like silver-tin solder, because I do not need to be super careful where the solder paste goes. The solder paste contains solder powder. And lead powder in my home would be really bad. (I still have a small PbSn roll for special cases)

Yeah if someone wanted to fix something at home I don't see how they do that without leaded solder. The silver stuff is really good but so hard to work with or remove.

Leaded solder also flows much better than the lead free stuff. Everyone in the industry that I know sticks with using leaded solder because it is simply easier to work with.

The whole solder debate becomes pointless when the device manufacturers make access to schematics, tools and parts impossible (without breaking laws), and serialize parts electronically so that even if your repair is as good or better than the original, the device STILL will not work because of how the company designed failures into the parts. I'm looking at Apple, but every time Apple is successful, the other electronics companies see the profit margins and follow suit.

There's also a glass mouse, that'd be cool

My favorite part of visiting Germany was seeing the extremely scuffed up and foggy plastic bottles for sodas and stuff. Seems like they actually applied the concept of recycling (in this case).

I have seen some food packaging that uses 50/50 of the stuff. Using the clear stuff in the front and the non-clear stuff on the back.

I notice that nobody here is talking about pyrolysis plant's and other plants that convert plastics etc into oil's and other useful energy's, the problem is the government and nothing else :D

Thank you for the additional context, I appreciate it

It's also worth pointing out that the early lead free solders were more brittle than leaded solders. From what I read it was partly responsible for the infamous Xbox 360 red ring of death and early PS3 failures. Some of those issues have been resolved through better design. New package designs, new solder formulations, etc have worked to help to mitigate the issues. But that took time and painful experience. And alot of dead game consoles (and PCs - NVidia had a massive lawsuit because of these same issues with certain chipsets they made).

but still heavily used for prototyping because it's easier to solder :) For mass production, lead free is where it is at right now (except for aerospace and some forms of transport because of durability), but leaded solder will never fully disappear.

@@iFireender It's banned where i live, you can't buy it. Everyone use Lead free and flux.

@@SaitoGray for rework, you often need to use leaded solder. Especially when you _cannot_ heat up the part of the board to the melting temp of the lead-free. (because silver-tin needs higher temperature than lead-tin). For desoldering you can use bismuth based low temp alloys, but those are far too weak for soldering.

He's limiting his analysis to a capitalist-market frame of reference which imposes some (I'd argue) insurmountable constraints on the problem of creating a sustainable economy AND a desirable society, but for confining oneself to that frame, he did a pretty good job.

@Fishy thanks for the interesting comment.

I made over 10 Euros in a month collecting cans and bottles people left at parks n stuff. Now seeing crushed cans makes me sad for the loss of the 10 cents I've experienced 😂

same here in Germany. Its also like an additional income for some people who collect bottles in festivals and concerts :'D

We do something similar in Canada with a recycling thing. You get charged some extra, so you are incestivized to recycle that stuff so you can get that money back.

I wish we had that system here in the UK. Not only does it incentivise the consumer to return packaging to be reused/recycled, it also provides a source of income. It's not much for sure, but when you're unemployed or homeless, any little helps- so as well as encouraging consumers to return the bottles and cans, I'd be very surprised if trash started disappearing from the streets- that empty can that someone tossed is now worth something, so people would collect them up. In fact, that's exactly what I did when I was unemployed. I'd keep an old shopping bag in my pocket, and whenever I saw a can I'd crush it and take it with me, to turn into an independent recycling scheme that paid cash for aluminium cans, among other items. I filled a 55 gallon drum with cans in my back yard, and when it was full I loaded it onto a wheelbarrow and took it down to the recycling place... only to find out they'd stopped taking cans a couple of weeks previously. At least all that junk was off the streets though- I just dumped it into my recycling bin and the local council got the cans instead.

Perfume is luxury, so they have to be expensive and differentiate from common item. "Refilling perfume is for pleb. Our perfume is sold in single use bottles." Different example - clothes are clothes, they should keep you covered. So why buy 100, 200, 500 dollar designer t-shirt over 5 dollar one? There's no increase in quality that justifies the purchase. It's a status symbol, that's it. Most poor people don't want to seem poor so they will do and buy what elites buy. Solution: make elites live like normal people, so there's no difference between upper and lower class. Unfortunately this goes against human nature and humanity itself, so it will never happen.

Can I add an edit: sugars do *not* have a benzene ring at their core

Toluene and xylene are a lot less toxic than benzene. Man, this whole comment is just a train wreck of disinformation

“Laws made by people who fundamentally did not understand what they were regulating.” -define legislator without defining legislator.

@@ataphelicopter5734 idk what I'm on, I meant Aromatics :/ sugars have an oxygen in the ring.

@@tylerfb1 +1 to this. On literally any topic from driving to shooting, legislators live in nonsense-world. My family run a law firm and I'll ask my dad to outline a case we're doing and just rub my temples because of how roundabout the laws are. Here in England, "handguns" are illegal, but carbines are not. They define the difference between "handgun" and "carbine" not through asking whether or not the weapon is a carbine or a pistol, but simply through how LONG the weapon is. So... a pistol with an absurdly long barrel is legal, and not a pistol, but a carbine. But it very obviously isn't. cbnmsdftghj Similar thing in the USA with the ATF and their rulings on braces, 80% finished receiver lowers, "short barreled rifles" and all the rest of that crap.

That sounds like a pretty good plan to me

THank you for a mature reply with actual information. So rare these days.

that's better than PH! I thought it was the same thing but different reason (traffic is the reason here iirc) so certain numbers cant go out on certain days (unless you're a medical/law professional) my cousins family bought a second car to go around this so what was described in the vid felt more like it was describing us xd

@@galicry What is PH? :)

@@jokepp ah, the philippines!! xD

Most befuddling part is the fact moat places that use those stupid straws still use a plastic lid. Does it only count if you take a picture of one shoved in some animals orifice for it to count?

I've had milkshakes with paper straws that worked just fine. It's an engineering problem that's been solved independently a thousand times. For that matter, I've had milkshakes with plastic straws that flattened or splintered or just didn't work, because the plastic couldn't cope with freezing temperatures or high viscosity liquids or even just being stored somewhere that has everyday temperature swings. It's not like plastic straws didn't (or don't still) have their own teething problems and QA issues.

Off shore wind farms beat hydroelectric by a mile in my opinion.

@Heather Petersen what's the point of lesser carbon emissions if there's not an ecosystem to help save? I'd argue climate change is more of a human existential threat that a planetary existential threat. The planet has gone through more catastrophic change and extinction events. The harm comes from how much we want to drag the rest of the planet down with us. Biodiversity is very important if we want the best chance for organisms to survive through climate change and our pollution. Not to mention that ecological collapse will also cause a disruption of fishing and agricultural industries so it does not exist in a vacuum.

@Heather Petersen I get the point you’re making, and yeah people do have to consider which is more important. The thing to keep in mind is that it isn’t just one species of fish being impacted, it is all migratory fish in the region. Anything that swims up river is impacted, and everything that relies on these fish is impacted too. It’s not just the animals that eat them, but a significant portion of plant life as well. Fish that spend a majority of their lives in the ocean then die in freshwater rivers have nutrients and minerals in their body not typically found in rivers that are released when decomposing, and the plants in the area require them to grow properly. Additionally, salmon in particular are incredibly important to the Native Americans in the region, both culturally and in their diet (of course everyone is different and not all indigenous people currently eat salmon as a staple part of their diet, but especially in more remote areas such as in Alaska it can be the main food source for some groups). Also, I’m not trying to say that hydroelectric power is bad in general, just specifically in this region. Unfortunately there are a lot of rivers in the Pacific Northwest so it is an attractive place to build dams. That was kind of an info dump lol, sorry about that. Short version is: all migratory fish populations get impacted, removing these fish from rivers could potentially collapse the ecosystem as a whole, and the fish are important to the Native Americans in the region both culturally and as a part of their diet.

@Heather Petersen Those are good points! I do agree that people do inevitably have to make choices and sacrifices when it comes to energy consumption. If it came down to the whole world vs a single ecosystem I’d probably choose the world, but realistically I don’t think it will come down to that. There are viable alternatives to hydroelectric power or even improvements on how dams work. That and there’s no way for dams to power the whole world, so alternatives are necessary regardless. Hydroelectric is a great power source now, but there are some significant issues with using it as a long term, global solution for renewable energy. I don’t think we’re at the point yet where we can tear down most dams in the Pacific Northwest, though the development of new technology and improving current technology gives me hope that we may be able to get to that point relatively soon. Though it’s not like every single dam needs to be removed. Unfortunately the driving factor behind using hydroelectric power has less to do with it being renewable and more to do with it being cheap. Large tech companies like Facebook have headquarter locations in the Pacific Northwest because the energy is so cheap, which also encourages the building of more dams to increase energy supply for a growing market. Unless a cheaper alternative arises, even if people develop better, less environmentally damaging ways of producing power large companies probably won’t switch over unless they’re forced to. That’s more so why I think it’s important to spread awareness about the impact of dams on the environment. It takes a long time for any sort of legislation or regulations to be enacted, so rather than waiting to push for change until after new technology has emerged it may be better to start now. Though it is hard to be optimistic at times.

Every time I see environmentalists talking about how planned obsolescence and unsustainable energy sources are ruining the planet. It seems reasonable and concerning. Then you people come out of the woodwork, talking about how Native Americans won’t get their salmon and the planet won’t be fit for life after humanity is extinct. It just makes me want to go out and buy a whole bunch of junk that I don’t need and, I don’t know, vote for fracking or something ‘cause god damn do I feel like I wasted a ton of worry on a whole big pile of nothing.

Try taking a course in sewing or watch some tutorials online. A small hole or a button that's fallen off is relatively easy to learn how to do. Might not be the neatest but you'll get better. Stuff like replacing a zip is more of a sewing-machine job, but a rip, tear, hole etc is very mendable with a needle and thread. Also there's a saying "A stitch in time saves nine", meaning that taking a couple minutes to sew up a tiny hole would stop it growing and becoming a huge job.

Almost any dry-cleaner also does alterations and repairs on clothing that are more affordable than buying new. Getting a zipper completely replaced or a lining fixed costs less than. $15-20 here in Los Angeles,which is so much cheaper than buying a $60-100 new jacket. The average sewing machine or vaccuum repair costs hundreds of dollars less than purchasing new. It’s just not convenient and might require actually speaking to a human being, which so many of us avoid now. We want to click and receive something in 2 days.

@@RevertedRashidah i think assuming that most are buying the $60-$100 jacket is the issue. most (american) people can’t even afford that. the rare times i buy myself clothes, i head straight to walmart since it’s all that i can afford. i’ve tried thrifting but i can’t always find things that fit me or prices have been driven up by the thrifting trend. it makes way more sense to the average minimum wage worker to go buy another $15 jacket than it is to spend that on material or service to repair an older jacket. especially when you factor in time. most working people spend most of their time working and it’s much easier to make a 5 minute stop to buy another jacket than to have to wait for a repair or do the repair yourself (plus the amount of time it may take to learn how to do the repair). while i’ve said that it’s “easier” multiple times, some people just don’t have a choice

If you use Google and go into a shop tailored (haha) for tailoring repairing and sewing, of course its going to be expensive. You are walking into the place design for it. But instead if you have a good social network, you can find people who repair holes, buttons, tears etc much much cheaper! Because to them it's a side hustle for some cash not a major business model. Better yet learn to do basic clothing repair at least if it's too far gone you cant fix it, you have the option to recycle it

Unfortunately people don't want to change. "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle" had become a shockingly controversial expression now'n days. People dissociate themselves from the system, reject agency so they can reject responsibility. Now it's all "the companies need to change". And sure that's true. But when that change does happen people complain that their paper straws or simple packaging feels cheap, or that an electronic device doesnt have a new iterations this year for them to buy. I hear it all the time "why am I being punished for THEIR waste". Nobody wants to change, and nobody wants the natural result of the companies changing for us. Too many only accept environmental measures while they believe the measure in question will have no inconvenience on their life.

@@TwilitKage Well said. The part that always gets me though, is that following the Reduce > Reuse > Recycle method actually is MORE convenient in most cases. People just don't want to change as you mentioned. Just like the water example: imagine people that haul that heavy package of 40 water bottles every week, putting into the cart, taking out into the car, and from the car to the home. They can just get a filter and never get water again, but week after week they torture their backs and wallet by buying water. Another easy example is moving. Most of us have to move to another place at some point in our lives. Having less stuff makes that process way easier and convenient. So many people dread moving and spend weeks stressing over it, packing, hiring movers, etc. because they have too much stuff. If they simply had less stuff (Reduce), the process would be so much easier and stress free.

​@@travellingslim What about in a job interview? If two people have similar credentials one has his own clothes the other has obviously adapted second hand, the guy with wardrobe money gets the job. How about the water bottles youre hung up on?(me too... like wtf its water, why do you need a single packaged serving? cant you just drink some?) Are those purchases of convenience or purchases out of unvalidated fear of the unsanitary natural world? I cant know for certain but i often assume the second one of most folks. Its the same reason people cant buy a whole chicken and quarter it themselves but will for some reason spend that same price on a package of too many drumsticks for "barbeque day". Much like a water filter the whole chicken doesnt come out of a package theres a personal effort step before you get the thing you want. We have excused convenience that was actually making people lazy and we have lauded people for the very mild effort of showing up to a job. I think weve become detached from reality over it too.

@@zachweyrauch2988 I'm not an extreme hippy or anything like that :) For the clothes, you don't need to have ragged hand-me-downs. I'm not saying don't buy new. My response in an RRR sense would be instead of buying a whole wardrobe of dress clothes, just have one or two white buttoned shirts and a pair or two of nice slacks (or the equivalent for women). Not only would you be able to use it for any job interview, but you can also multi-use it for any other semi-formal event where you need a nice shirt and pants. Sure, if you're going for a job on Wall St. or a law firm or something like that, yeah you'll probably need to buy a nice new suit if you don't have one already, but the RRR takeaways would be to just buy what you need, try and reuse it for other purposes (like a date, funeral, wedding, event, etc), and when you're done with it, you can probably donate it to charity if it's not too rough. Clothing isn't as much of a pain point anyway in my view compared to other things. There's already a culture of hand-me-downs, donating old clothes to charities, thrift stores, etc. Perhaps a point would be that some people buy clothes that they never wear, so it's wasteful there, but there are certainly bigger fish to fry in the efforts of RRR.

This is flawed. Perhaps True where you stay, but where I stay the lower class or poor suburb is in a ditch/Valley and avoid heavy pollution from a plant north that gets the rest of us living in the "better" area. Im sure there is plenty of other examples out there. Fepends from city to city

@@V77710 anecdotal, in most of the world the poor area is serviced worse and most importantly poor people can't move intentionally, while rich people can, so rich and poor areas shift depending on the desires of rich people - which obviously include quality of life

I think you could say the low-income part without throwing race into it, as I don't think that makes the case any better or true. In short, it introduces debatable issues where there is enough truth already. Say the same thing about a place in, say, China, where there is a much more homogenous "mix" of race/ethnicity and the issues are probably the same.

@@mprooveit3588 i mean it’s not really debatable whether minorities are disproportionately affected by poverty. there’s plenty of fact based evidence that’s shows systematically how it’s happened. id say it’s very important that race is brought up or there is a big chance people of color would once again be left behind in a new industrial revolution.

I'm in the poorer income bracket. Being thrifty helps me be sustainable but it's hard when buying toiletries. But reusing plastic containers for lunch so it doesn't go to landfil? Sustainable ,using wash rags instead kf throwing way paper towels and hanging them to dry - sustaible. Turning off the lights cause the electric bill is to high? Sustainable. You know who's wasteful? People with money that's who. My parents buy lettuce in plastic they leave the lights on. Why? Because they can afford to.

Why can't mixed fabric be used to make matted felt, stuffing, quilts, ribbons, small items, or rags? Or donated for people to use for diy.

@@user-gu9yq5sj7cMixed fabric can indeed be used for certain things like stuffing and sometimes rags as you say, however, it's downcycling rather than recycling. Currently, more things can be downcycled rather than recycled, and there is only so much demand for scraps or downcycled materials.

its the other way around isnt it. Security updates are pushed through android long after devices reach end of life. Regular updates are stopped, but security updates for most devices are shipped even to EoL devices. In this case it's through the Android OS, not through googles fork of android being used on Pixel.

@@wafu6058 except that most Android phones never receive those updates unless the manufacturer and/or service provider decides to, unlike iPhones which Apple will send to all (supporting) devices.

Yeah I know the paper bottle grossly oversimplifies the concept. That's pretty much what the whole video is explaining. But you need to get people to click somehow before you can educate them on the nuances.

_"aluminum recycling (smelting with production of .5 t of toxic slag per 1 t of recycled aluminum)"_ - I have never heard anything like that. I could be wrong here, but to my knowledge aluminium recycling has very little loss, certainly not 33%. Maybe you made a mistake with the numbers? Also, not sure why the slag would be particularly toxic, it should be mostly just aluminium oxide, which is harmless, shouldn't it?

@@Basement-Science Austrian ministry for environment: Udo Boin, Thomas Linsmeyer, Franz Neubacher, Brigitte Winter: Stand der Technik in der Sekundäraluminiumerzeugung im Hinblick auf die IPPC-Richtlinie. (Österreichisches) Umweltbundesamt

@@Basement-Science and I should add that the slag isn't loss of aluminium. The regain acutally is 90%, but the problem is all the chemistry it takes to get there. Starting with: "aluminium" we use typically isn't pure Al but some type of alloy with another metal (tin, iron, manganese, magnesium), because aluminium alone can't withstand much heat or mechanical stress. This is why the first step of aluminium recycling involves chemistry & sometimes electrolysis to remove the other metals, producing one big portion of that toxic slag I mentioned. This is also the step that causes those 10% loss in aluminium. Next is: now you have regained your pure aluminium .. first you need to replenish those 10% aluminium you lost with primary aluminium which comes with the disadvantages I mentioned already. Then you can work it or re-alloy it with something, and then process it into some shape. These processes use certain inorganic salts that cover the metal without mixing with it, which prevents the aluminium from oxidizing too much. When finished, these salts are rinsed off .. and you have another portion of toxic slag.

@@augustaseptemberova5664 I'll have to look into it in more detail, thanks. I knew that aluminium is always in various alloys, but I would have assumed that they would mostly get the right alloys out by mixing in the right types of recycleables. I know many scrapyards differentiate between several types of it, for example extruded aluminium. But I could also see that you cant always get the right mix since it's not going to be as easy as adding or removing carbon in steel.

The customer is at fault. Because convenience is above all. I repair my things locally, even if it costs more than buying a new one. But most of my friends don't.

The customer has absolutely nothing to do with it. If I want my steak wrapped in butcher paper instead of plastic, I can go home and not eat. Guess what...that's not an option. I remember when you couldn't buy a steak wrapped in plastic and I've been complaining about this non-sustainable packaging practice since started. The same applies to other corporate practices. Moreover individual consumers cannot possibly stay informed of the plethora of procedures and materials, many of which are proprietary and or legally protected secrets, across every industry that they do business with. Assigning consumer responsibility is nothing more than corporate deflection

TL;DR That's why they make the big bucks

@@jeromewesselman4653 its still ultimately the customer's fault, but its harder to get people to change their spending habits then it is to have government intervention. The business aren't beholden to anyone but their customers, but they can get sued into changing their practices.

The reason why consumer spending habits are difficult to change is lack of available (and or perceived) options. Look at spending habits during the so-called pandemic. Consumers love McDonald's, right? Apparently so, until you consider that all the mom and pop restaurants were closed because indoor dining was deemed non-essential. Why weren't potential super-spreader centers such as Walmart CLOSED during 2020? If public health were truly at stake, they would have been, with smaller less-risky grocery and dining venues remaining open. And don't get me started about public drinking fountains versus plastic bottles. Once again, the safer option lost out due to top-down regulation (and propaganda), completely bypassing consumer choice. And while we're at it..."free" vaccines? News flash: nothing's free, but some things are heavily subsidized

while a good idea, I could very easily see disease rates spiking because of people constantly using them, not to mention the additional work required to clean them, the parts required to make them and the piping you would have to install for it, and that's just a few things off the top of my head. It could help in the long run, but it's had to say, and could definetly cause a lot of short-term or even long term problems

I often cringe thinking about how much waste heat is being generated when I consume streaming video content online...

That’s awesome! I think people being thrifty is important too, and I haven’t seen that advertised a lot. If people put enough thought into it, they can reduce their own waste a lot, even other people’s waste too. There’s all kinds of ways to repurpose packaging and such. I’m a pretty big eco-brick maker. (If y’all haven’t heard of it, feel free to look it up, it’s pretty neat) I don’t save just my plastics for them, but friend’s plastic too. I’ve even had people see me making them at church and leave plastic for me instead of tossing it. I also pick up plastic from sides of roads because there’s a place for it to be contained and serve a purpose too (you make a different kind of eco-bottle to contain dirty plastic) There’s no recycling program here, so I save every can we get too. I use them to start seeds, washing them nicely between uses so they last longer. Idk about the recycling rate for cans anyway? Like, how many of them get recycled versus just going to a landfill. By no means will this alone save the world or anything and it’d be cool for packaging to become biodegradable and everything, but these materials already exist now, and I like using them. Idk if that mindset makes any sense, I’m just a crafty and poor urban kid where recycling programs don’t exist djfjfhffhcj

@@LightlessLunala but does it all work in the grand scheme of things??

Just out of curiosity How you find the cost compares to old lead solder And do you know much about the recycling of the low temp solder

Most lead-free solder is 99% tin. The only somewhat common exception is Bismuth-Tin solder with around 40% tin, but it's very specialized and not used in manufacturing to my knowledge.

Great tip! Thanks for checking out the video

This is very true. However, they are better primed for future sustainability. As using something “on the grid” largely uses resources that are consumed more efficiently. It also allows for a larger solution to be handled and upgraded easier. It’s far more affordable for a ton of people to have a small tax hike and cover an electric conversion of an existing plant than it is for each one of those same individuals to install windmills, solar panels, or another form of green energy generators at their homes and also deal with the yearly financial upkeep. The heat is a very good point, as data centers do generate a TON of heat. However, there are data centers out there which use the waste heat to cut their heating costs by pumping the heat into their offices and surrounding communities, and some are even testing the use of a heat capture device to turn it into straight up usable energy (which helps keep it more sustainable in the summer when hot air isn’t needed.)

@@benjaminorr1823 interesting, you seem to know a lot more than me! I think its great to hear, and not unsurprising, that people are already improving these systems. I just wanted to highlight that nothing is for free and we always impacting the planet in some way. Thanks Benjamin ;)

Waste heat from datacenters can be used for municipal hot water. They can also be powered by low emission energy sources.

More importantly, digital solutions must be decoupled from the digital lifestyle. More digital management of services, less screens on at a given time

Yes, excellent thoughts in here. Thank you for pointing them out. I think they are important to take into account when trying to design a circular economy or a more sustainable system.

One of the problems of scale is just that: Scale. I agree with what you are saying, but it relies on the consumption that we have. Many products would just not exist were it not for the wasteful way that we rigged our system. However, these products help push scale in many ways - if we removed 90% of the ships on the world's oceans, the ships would be harder to fill, the companies would be smaller and probably forced to having more, smaller, less efficient ships, and so on. I would agree with you to some extent, but also point out that a large part of the problem is in over-consumption, not in the efficiency of manufacturing. Much of what we do, we could continue doing it, if we just did 10 times less of it.

@@arildedvardbasmo490 The thing about over-consumption though, is how can we say what is "just right" consumption? What most people 50-100 years ago would call over-consumption is the base level of life quality we expect today. I don't believe that lowering consumption is the right way to handle the future. I don't even think it's feasible. People wouldn't accept it, there would be too much pushback. I believe that if we want the future to be sustainable we need to keep improving life quality while making things more efficient and cleaner. When the more sustainable thing gives a better quality of life than the less sustainable thing, that's when we make real progress.

Logistics can be made carbon neutral, at least in theory. There is no way to make sourcing the materials for everything we currently manufacture entirely sustainable - producing and using less is worth pursuing, even if it makes the logistics less efficient.

full scale efficiency is the enemy of sustainability. Jevon's paradox perfectly explains why this is the case. The planet does not care what the carbon emission is per capita. The planet only cares what the total carbon emission is. Like it or not, learning to consume less collectively is the way moving forward.

“Free”. Not necessarily against what you are saying but it would be nice if we could reach this new open utopia you mention by being honest about what “free” programs are. There is not free lunch just trade offs and many of the of the great “free” stuff introduced prior is a handicapping the youth today with obligations we never benefited from.

@@cendrizzi universally accessible* it would pay for itself exponentially because of reasons explained in the comment. People would be able to take jobs and expand the economy rather than syphon it like it does now.

Of all the useless stuff we learn at school, we could have at least have teachers who studied economics and ecology or similar, to open up a new school subject.

I don't know where you live but education is already accessible here in the US. Every child up to about the age of 18 can go to a free government run school. After that it's up to the person to decide if they want to invest in their education.

@@agisler87 you already acknowledged that you know I'm talking about university level education so you can drop the intentionally misinterpreting my points act. But, as you know, we already made public school available (and all but mandatory) for everyone, the same should apply to university/college level. Student debt can be canceled any time, with the only consequences being republicans doing whatever they can to stop it and then make all college free and open to everyone who meets educational requirements (and can if they need to through free GED programs etc) and then it will pay for itself almost immediately and return the investment exponentially through a highly educated workforce and job creation

Would love for there to just be high quality sustainable products but indeed it isn't that simple. Price is one of the most important factors unfortunately. Even though lot's of the time cheap means there will be higher costs long term. Much like the environmental issue itself, short term it works and is cheap, but long term it will cost.

You're right. Corporations only value the high output of cheap products because that's what makes them the most profit today. If Consumers changed their priorities, then corporations would be incentivized to make stuff that matches those priorities. If we're willing to pay more for sustainably produced products, they'll make more sustainable products. This gets complicated by many things such as deceptive marketing like that 'paper' bottle in the thumbnail, but is still something we can move toward. Vote with your wallet.

@@syndaquil4838 going forward as a consumer I think I'd value sustainability even more so, I think another way the consumer can have in impact moreso than the supplier is in resale where people could choose to buy pre owned clothes over fast fashion or donate their old clothes etc. Perhaps more important than buying more but environmentally consciously is to buy less and make more of what we already have.

One way some countries address the issue is having the companies take back the product at end of life. If they are then responsible for dealing with the waste (note the country also puts a cost on waste) then the situation improves as it adjusts the equation if waste is included In It by default. I was thinking about Germany in this instance, they are fairly progressive with this. Not ideal as I don’t think it applies with good sold outside the country, but certainly a concerted try to fix the issue. I personally found the title of this video either clickbait or misleading. To say they “can’t” is to give an out in a situation where they do have some control. Some go as far as to distort social discussion though ads and lobbying to a degree that is generally considered perverse. The ‘recycling’ of plastic has been one. Downcycling is usually the best case scenario for plastics and that’s if they even get reprocessed as it appears to have been a crock in most cases. So in these cases the plastic producers and petro chemical companies have gone out of their way at great expense to obfuscate the situation. Sure it may be true a usable solution may cost more, but to willingly drive the discussion in a way that actively thwarts it solving is something a number of companies/industries have done is just gross and needs to be addressed.

I think about these systems like a tug of war. Initially designers make many simple decisions that are always good. Use recycled aluminum instead of virgin aluminum because it's cheaper and more energy efficient to produce than mining ore. Easy win. That's the part of a tug of war where the lines are getting pulled tight. But then we run out of easy decisions and we start fighting on every decision. Do we use durable but toxic lead solder or safe but fragile tin solder? It's not an easy choice anymore, we've already made all the easy decisions where everybody wins. Now we need to decide if we want to use more expensive materials and manufacturing techniques in order to make expensive but less polluting products, or if we prioritize getting our products into more people's hands. Getting cheaper products into more people's hands sounds like simple greed in the context of luxury items like phones and clothes, but what about food? There are a lot of people who don't have the resources to eat organic and fair trade with every meal. So is a farmer who uses lots of glyphosate in RoundUp Ready fields instead of hiring teams of laborers to hoe the field really making a bad decision when it allows him to sell his products for cheaper, allowing poor families to buy more food for their limited income?

The problem with this is that it _simply isn't true_ . Economies of scale do not say that bigger is better; they say they is an optimal size for everything (depending on many global and local variables, of course). When you break those monopolies apart, you'll get _more_ profit out of them, not less. When Standard Oil was forced to break into multiple companies, _each_ of those companies had bigger profits than Standard Oil as a whole. When France started to rebuild after WW2, they went with the "bigger is better" mindset; very soon, they realized how stupid that is - when e.g. a steel mill would be more efficient while it's running... but then racking up loads and loads of waste when it was being maintained, for example. And even worse, the bigger you are, the more power you inevitably get in the government, which allows you to gain unfair advantages, become "too big to fail" and all the good old illnesses. The whole economic theory the modern world is built on is a bunch of lies made by dishonest academia and happily abused by the people who get to the new money first. Inflation is _not_ a good thing. Deflation is _not_ a bad thing. Prices change because the world changes. Pretending as if that weren't true is a big chunk of how we got where we are today. When the central banks were created to "tame" inflation, sure, they made inflation more incremental. But money lost value year after year, and in a decade... Where does the new money come from? Someone sold the lie that making mortgages "cheap" (i.e. low interest) would make it easier for people to own their homes. But what really happens? Exactly, the prices rise to compensate; the supply isn't very flexible. Low mortgages with high interest rates were exchanged for ridiculously large mortgages with low interest rates. Which means you don't have a chance of buying a home without a mortgage in the west - and you end up paying a mortgage for half of your life. And all that time, that money "created" by those loans slowly filters through society, making the rich richer and the poor poorer. If the managers really put profits above everything... we would actually often be better off, as awful as that sounds. Sadly, they are even more consumed in the wild consumerism, even more obsessed with their ego and appearances, of _course_ they need a brand new car every two years - that's how everyone knows they're successful, right? It's not really profitable squeezing the last ounce of work out of your employees, but they do it anyway - because they don't care about the company, they care about being able to say "See how I motivated my reports to work extra hours?" I've switched to six hour workdays; I get much more work done in those six hours than I ever did in eight. We need to stop the obsession with "work long and hard". It often hurts productivity. In the end, the managers will always find something to fill your time with, regardless of how stupid or backwards it is. Honesty. There's where it all starts.

Yup. Localization is a big aspect of it that unfortunately didn't make the final cut of the video. Thanks for providing additional context.

@@Design.Theory You're welcome. No worries.

New and old age religion: "Don't study STEM." appearently.

"Like the saying goes, if everyone had to do everything, everything would become automated in days." If everyone had to do everything, we would revert back to living as subsistence farmers, after a short and chaotic bout of mass violence where the vast majority of the population dies fighting over the now much less productive land. A small fertilizer factory simply can't create the same amount of fertilizers with the same cost (in other words, the same amount of inputs) as a large one. This is called economies of scale. By building larger, we can build more efficiently, using less resources to make more. It's not just a matter of wanting to build bigger. The laws of physics dictate it. When we stop doing that, we will either need to give up our standard of living and reduce our population, or use significantly **more** natural resources than we do today.

You know Benzene is bad when even the most crooked chemical and industrial corporations willingly acknowledge that the stuff is nasty.

You would have to replace your computer, because new one is faster, has larger RAM and in general is better. Same applies to everything else - fashion changes.

@@ceu160193 no. At most, 80% of users will only need a new CPU over a period of decades. And most them not even that. For most you replace your PC when it breaks in a way you cant fix. Although fashion can and does change that’s societal fashion and an individual may find a style and stick with to the grave.

@@randombrit13 Then that individual becomes outcast. Social norms demand you to wear clothes up to current fashion. As for PC - mine is self-assembled, but enough people do not have expertise in that area.

@@ceu160193 what type of 2012 Disney channel high school do you think we’re living in? Societal norm in the developed is to embrace and celebrate individuality including unique style. And no I don’t believe you made your own pc when you can make comments like above that blatantly display your ignorance of PC building norms and culture.

@@randombrit13 There is no PC culture in my country, luckily. And I did assemble my computer myself, because it's cheaper, than paying specialised firms.

Pretty much this.

Organic farming works best on a smaller scale is the thing. You can have a small farm put out a large amount of food on a shoestring using organic methods, but it doesn't scale up the way that factory farming currently runs. Since we have a major issue with conglomeration/consolidation and smaller farms being priced out of business, the massive monocrop farms that need insane resources to keep planting the same thing over and over again win out pricewise. It's cheaper to just spray mass amounts of fertilizer and not manage the fields than it is to put in the labor to do it right.

@@FranNyan The labor that also costs money and that a ton of people are arguing for raising the value of...

@@ZeroKitsune Hence it not scaling up and not working on a corporate model, and why when they try and force it, it has a huge energy cost. A small farm that wouldn't be using factory farming techniques anyway can make it work with a very low carbon footprint and lower labor costs over all, but the second you try and scale it up, it falls apart. This is why scaling up is not always the best practice and why you can't just use a one-mindset-fits-all. Also, you can't find people willing to work most large-scale farm-labor jobs, no matter how much you pay. They're basically the worst kind of factory. That's why they have to import migrant labor and have switched to machine harvesting. The whole food industry is a hot mess in so many ways it's amazing we have any food production at all.

yeah i guess i meant relative to my day job which revolves around pumping out thousands of mass produced products

@@Design.Theory servers require a lot of electricity and cooling, even those that run on ARM processors