2020-08-19 - On Recycling, Sustainability, and Other Things
-----------------------------------------------------------
I recently read various posts[0][1] by others on gopher about
sustainability and reusing old computers (amongst other things) before
running to buy new stuff. This reminded me that I've long wanted to
write up my own thoughts on the matter.
Introduction
------------
I use a laptop from 2008 that was thrown away by others as my main
computer. More specifically, it's a Lenovo 3000 N200 with an Intel
Celeron 550 2.00 GHz and 2 GB of RAM. I wish I could use an older
computer, but society forces me to use something at least this new
in order to communicate with the ugly "modern" web. Most people think
I'm somewhat crazy for using such "old" equipment, but few stop to
consider what they are saying. In essence, they want me to throw away
a perfectly functioning machine that would have been considered a
supercomputer mere decades ago, in order to buy a new device that has
no truly new features other than flashier animations and the ability
to display even more obscenely bloated websites.
I have more than 20 laptops lying around at home, most of them still
perfectly usable. All of them would have been thrown away if I hadn't
saved them. Since I'm one of the only people I know who actually uses
such computers, they will probably land in the trash eventually as
well because I simply can't use 20 laptops at once. How has our society
been allowed to drift so far that it allows this blatant waste right in
front of our eyes? How can others not feel a great sadness when such
wealth is thrown out without second thought? There is something deeply
wrong with a society that allows this. In the following sections, I
will elaborate on some of the specific issues with this thinking, first
the non-environmental and then the environmental ones.
The Great Illusion
------------------
One pernicious belief I often encounter, although it is usually
somewhat hidden, is the belief that everyone in this world has access
to the newest technology. Of course, nobody states this outright since
everyone knows that there is the mythical "third world", in which
the conditions are much worse than in the "first world", but most
people give away their real views in the way they act. They ridicule
old technology without realizing that many use such technology not
because of moral reasons like me but because they cannot obtain
anything more expensive. There are many people to whom even the laptop
I use would be a luxury. Ridiculing such computers is an insult to
those who cannot afford anything else and is emblematic of our spoiled
society that always requires more, newer things, rather than being
satisfied with what it has.
I greatly respect Jorge Arellano Cid, the developer of the Dillo web
browser, because he set out to "democratize information access" by
allowing even those with fewer means to enjoy the benefits of the web,
as explained in this snippet from an interview[2] he once gave:
> What would be the main use for Dillo?
>
> Information access!
> Dillo could open the doors of a new Internet experience to tens of
> millions of people in the world.
> It is important to know that the entry barriers to Internet are
> _artificial_. They were created and sustained with a view to make
> better business profits.
Sadly, much information is now locked behind great walls of JavaScript
and other abominations, causing many to lose this access they once had,
or could have had. Those who are responsible for this are living in an
illusion, refusing to acknowledge the harm they inflict on others with
their misguided attempts to improve things.
Do these people not understand how much can be achieved with even the
most modest machines by modern standards? A computer opens up an
entire world of information and creativity never before seen by
mankind. A computer allows one to express creativity in ways never
imagined before. With the help of computers ridiculed as trash by our
society, someone with no wealth can access the vast troves of knowledge
in the world and learn skills they never could have learned otherwise.
They can even play around with the computer itself and learn to program
it, unleashing a power too great to describe without experiencing it.
But no, let's prevent all this. Let's stop the masses from experiencing
enlightenment. Let's erect artificial barriers to knowledge and
creativity in order to add more flashy buttons and worthless animations
to websites and the other useless programs created by people who
subscribe to this sort of thinking. That is clearly the way forward.
The Environment and Recycling
-----------------------------
So far, I've only talked about the non-environmental impacts of our
wasteful culture, but there are very real effects on the environment
as well. I don't want to repeat the countless articles and
documentaries that have covered the harm our obsession with new
technology has caused, especially in poorer countries. Most people
know about these problems, at least to some extent, but they seem
to believe that recycling and proper waste disposal can fix them.
Alas, this is not so. According to iFixit, significant amounts of
material, including many valuable rare earth metals, cannot be
recovered through recycling[3][4]. Electronics cannot be truly
recycled. Period.
I don't think many people fully understand what this means. Eventually,
all our resources will be used up, and then there won't be any fun
games left to play. Before that happens, though, we will probably have
destroyed the world in other ways already anyways.
What really bothers me as well is when some people dare to claim that
it's better to use newer devices because they are more power-efficient.
Anyone claiming this is either malicious or entirely delusional. The
majority of energy a laptop uses is consumed during the manufacturing
process, not during actual use[5]. The recycling that can be done
requires a lot of energy as well, further adding to the waste. When you
top that off with the fact that it's *impossible* to properly recycle
most devices, it is clearly ludicrous to argue for newer devices on the
basis of power efficiency.
This should be apparent to most people, but I think it is important for
them to realize the gravity of the situation. If we keep going on like
this, there *will* be a collapse at some point, and we will not be
prepared for it.
Hardware and Software
---------------------
What makes this whole issue so difficult to solve is that sanity is
being attacked on both the hardware and software side. On the one hand,
software is becoming larger and more bloated constantly, but on the
other hand, computers are also being produced with less and less
quality in mind. Most of my slightly older laptops have replaceable
CPUs, RAM, and generally are easier to open, compared to the
abominations that call themselves "modern". In our quest to make
everything smaller and more portable, we have lost sight of the much
more important goal of sustainability. When these modern machines break,
nothing can be done other than throwing everything away.
It's almost as if the hardware and software industries are working
together. Hardware is produced in such a fashion that it will stop
working after just a few years, and those machines that do continue to
work are made obsolete by the relentless bloating of software. See
[6] and [7] for two articles on these two sides of the coin.
I've already mentioned the web, which is one the greatest causes of
bloat nowadays (see e.g. "The Website Obesity Crisis"[8]). Desktop
software, however, is not exempt from this. Setting aside Electron
apps, which I cannot call desktop software with a straight face, even
normal programs like LibreOffice are turning into absolute nightmares.
LibreOffice used to be a relatively nice word processor, but I am now
astounded everytime I open it because of how heavyweight it's gotten.
I don't use LibreOffice anymore unless I need to open documents created
by others, but it used to be the clear recommendation when someone
needed a word processor. Now, it barely runs on most of my computers
and even crashes frequently on the much more modern computers of my
relatives. Why do the developers of software always feel the desire to
add features until the program collapses under its own weight? In this
case, I would assume it had a lot to do with copying everything that
Microsoft Word did without considering what is really needed for a word
processor. The sad part is that LibreOffice now cannot be used anymore
on many perfectly functioning computers even by the masses of people who
only need the features that were already available years ago. See [9]
for a good article on the subject, which is still very accurate despite
its age.
This may not be malicious, the developers probably *think* they're doing
good (although I can't say that for sure when I look at developers for
corporations like M$, whose most useful product has been Comic Sans),
but they lack the critical thinking that would lead them to reconsider
their actions. In the end, this just supports my belief that the
computer industry consists of a bunch of children playing with flashing
toys without regard for the consequences.
UPDATE (2024-11-24): I should probably apologize for the tone of this
section. I didn't want to pick on LibreOffice or its developers. Even
though I don't like how heavyweight it has become, I do still appreciate
that there's an alternative to M$ Word that can open the files created
by it (or by many other word processors). I also realize that it's
probably impossible to create a program that is both lightweight and
also works as a replacement for those other heavyweight programs.
My point was more that there should be an alternative that may not be
compatible with everything else, but can be used for the basic tasks
that most people need, and we as a society shouldn't force people to
use heavyweight programs just because they need to open files created
by others that have no reason to require such programs.
Sacrifice
---------
Now the question many may be asking is "what can be done to solve these
problems?" This is where the industry really makes me mad. Wherever you
go, there are advertisements for various "green" products that will
save the planet (marketing-speak for "we don't care about the planet at
all because we're a soulless corporation, but we want to trick people
into buying our product"). This is simply a cover-up. Society is living
in a utopian dream that proclaims we will solve all our problems with
technology. I see this thinking everywhere, including university -
there especially, everyone is hyped about every new technology that
comes out, and everyone seems to think developing technology will lead
to the ultimate solution.
This is typical of our lazy society - technology will solve all our
problems, so we don't have to do anything. But this cannot work. In
order to actually change anything, society has to be changed. Society
must leave these utopian thoughts behind and step back to reconsider
whether throwing more technology at problems caused by technology will
solve these problems.
The most important thing is that this will not work without sacrifices.
Maybe people will have to keep using older computers and perhaps older
monitors that aren't 4k (I've never even used any monitor with such a
high resolution, so I don't know what the problem is). Maybe people
will have to replace their fancy, animated GUI widgets with simpler
versions that reserve the processing power for more useful tasks. So
what? Would you prefer to destroy the planet just so you can satisfy
your hunger for shiny technology? Using these older devices is barely
a sacrifice (at least if you run software on them that was created by
people with functioning brains), but people will have to realize that
they need to change something *themselves* if they want to have any
real impact.
Conclusion
----------
Before ending this post, I want to make it clear that I don't oppose
research into new technology, especially at universities. I just think
that we still need to vastly reduce our consumption in order to have
any chance at saving the planet. The greenest computers are the ones
that have already been produced (excluding *very* old ones for which
the power consumption really does overshadow the other environmental
impacts), so we should focus our energy on making those work longer.
I hope you haven't forgotton the section "The Great Illusion" after I
wrote about the environmental impacts for so long. The issues I talked
about there are just as important as the environmental ones and often
seem to be overlooked because most people simply have no idea what the
rest of the world really looks like.
Note that this post is mainly about computers, but my thoughts on having
to make sacrifices apply just as much to many other areas of life, for
instance having to trade the convenience of plastic for slightly
impractical but more sustainable alternatives. Maybe I'll write a post
on that someday, but computers are my main focus.
Lastly, these are just a bunch of thoughts I've written up, so they may
not be entirely coherent in all places. Let me know if you have any
feedback or differing opinions.
- lumidify
[0]
gopher://zaibatsu.circumlunar.space/0/~solderpunk/phlog/discussions-toward-radically-sustainable-computing.txt
[1]
gopher://i-logout.cz/0/phlog/posts/2019-01-17_recycling_and_reusing.txt
[2]
https://web.archive.org/web/20220512043530/https://www.dillo.org/interview.html
[3]
https://www.ifixit.com/Right-to-Repair/E-waste
[4]
https://www.ifixit.com/Right-to-Repair/Recycling
[5]
https://www.ifixit.com/Right-to-Repair/Manufacturing
[6]
gopher://sdf.org/0/users/solderpunk/phlog/lithium-blues.txt
[7]
gopher://sdf.org/0/users/rusty/Post06-against-complexity
[8]
https://idlewords.com/talks/website_obesity.htm
[9]
https://people.inf.ethz.ch/wirth/Articles/LeanSoftware.pdf
