To be clear: yes, you can make circuits out of all sorts of cool stuff. But, you can't make the high-speed, high-performance, ultra-compact circuits required to meet the demands of the products out of just anything. I'd love to see one doing layout for a big fat BGA device oscillating at 1.5GHz on a lasagna noodle, much less getting down to sub-6-mil traces, or 4+ layers.<p>Pray tell though, what affordable semi-conductor material is there out there to replace silicon, that is readily recyclable and achieves the same target?<p>I fear, too many people want their cake and to eat it too - you want the latest and greatest capabilities (want, not need), but you want them to make it in a way which it will not function, so that you can feel good about it. ("You," being the standard consumer, not any one person in particular.)
"PCBs (Printed Circuit Boards) are guilty too – recyclability is incredibly low (and very expensive) and they do not decompose. Why can’t use a biodegradable material instead of silicon?"<p>PCBs are NOT made of silicon. Integrated circuits are (but not their packages). PCBs are usually FR-4 material:<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Printed_circuit_board" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Printed_circuit_board</a>
The problem with products is not that they're made from materials like aluminum or silicon or glass but that these materials are combined in ways that make it very difficult to extract them from the finish product when recycling.<p>Apple has gone a long way to making parts that are more "pure", where, for instance, the chassis of new computers is milled from a solid piece of metal that, once removed, can be shredded and reformed with no more difficulty than a drink can. The same goes, in principle, for the glass.<p>The plastics in most computers are made from an exotic blend of materials and are not easily reprocessed.<p>What we need more than cardboard computers is standards on how to manufacture products so they can be unmanufactured in the end and rebuilt into other things. The goal here is for 0% loss in the recovery cycle. Anything below 100% is not, by definition, sustainable.<p>If that sounds impossible, consider that the natural ecosystem in which we all live tends towards a 100% recycling rate. There are very few natural byproducts that do not have a recovery path. For instance, most trees produce enormous amounts of "garbage" in the form of leaves but these are almost immediately recycled.<p>Given that the natural world has been doing this for literally billions of years, there is much to be learned.<p>A great book on this subject is <i>Cradle to Cradle</i> (<a href="http://www.mcdonough.com/cradle_to_cradle.htm" rel="nofollow">http://www.mcdonough.com/cradle_to_cradle.htm</a>) which proposes radically re-thinking our industrial cycle.
As is true with most things, this is a case of where consumers need to vote with their wallets. While it would be great if the world ran on great intentions and thinking for the future, the reality is that money talks today, and today is the most important of all days, because nobody knows if they'll be around tomorrow.
tldr - Admirer of gadget fashion design ponders wastefulness of consumer culture. Wants for token "recycling" to soothe his conscience. Looks at conceptual art projects as if they're close to practical technology. Finishes up penance and walks away thinking that he has earnestly evaluated his own wastefulness.
I don't see how "built to last" means "built out of cardboard." I can't find the original Rob Walker piece, but it sounds like it's talking about timeless quality vs. empty fashion, not about the environment.<p>An iPhone lasts a long time, and the author should be comforted that not everyone can afford to buy a new one every time Apple bumps the version, naturally limiting Apple's ability to fill landfills with barely-used iPhones by launching new product features.<p>The net footprint of a big company like Apple is surely complicated, as there are many ways to offset one's impact. I'm no expert, but Apple has a whole website on their strategy (<a href="http://www.apple.com/environment/" rel="nofollow">http://www.apple.com/environment/</a>) that shows they are making an effort, perhaps a large one.
Please, don't conclude that Apple (and now Google) products aren't recyclable because of a quote from Wired citing some "friends from the recycling industry".<p>One thing I do know is that iPhones and other Apple products have high resale value, that there's an industry thriving on selling replacement screens, batteries etc.<p>This wouldn't be the case if most people considered these devices crap and obsolete the day a new product was introduced.<p>From my experience, people keep their Apple products for many years, often giving them to other family members when they upgrade themselves. If they weren't built to last, this would be impossible to do.<p>The real landfill fillers are the crappy plastic phones that get scratced and damaged.
If we charged for inputs and wastes properly, that would pressure economic chains from both ends to minimize environmental impact.<p>We don't. For inputs we generally charge the cost of digging something up out of the dirt, and for outputs we charge the cost of burying something under the dirt. We shouldn't be surprised our economies have become a wasteful race of pleasurable consumption.<p>We're forcing our descendants to subsidize our lifestyle.
I honestly think that in due time (1+ years from now) someone will have figured out a way to recycle those new Apple tech toys. Glue melts, glass and aluminum has different melting points...<p>I honestly think that people are making a bigger deal out of it than it is. Also, the better something is designed the longer I will personally want to use it. Make stuff out of cardboard, but if it starts falling apart it will end up being thrown out sooner rather than later. My family still uses and owns the iBook G4 I purchased in 2004...
"why not embrace the throwaway culture and just make everything easy and practical to throw away?"<p>Because enough people say the following:<p>"I, for one, love my shiny new iPhone each year. No amount of (my own) preaching is going to get me to keep my iPhone 4S when Apple announces the iPhone 5 this year."
More like "please stop copying Apple's advertisement style". This is getting so out of hand that in Nexus Q case, for instance, you get this beautiful "ad-documentary" with a lot of people saying hyperbolic catch-phrases and not a single clue on what's the product all about...