When people talk about electronics and environmentalism, they tend to talk about planned obsolecence, rare earth metals, or pollution from manufacturing or recycling, which are all big problems of course, this is also something I’ve been wondering:
Most higher end electronics have metal casings made by CNC milling a solid piece of aluminum, magnesium alloy, or another metal. I think it was first made popular by Apple with their Macbooks. The first problem that I can think of is that a casing needs to be hollow, so you’re starting out with a solid piece of metal and carving it until most of it is gone, and even though the metal shavings can be recycled, both the CNC and the recycling process require energy, and the milling process also requires a constant stream of petroleum-based lubricant (though I’m not sure if you can just use something cleaner like water or if the oil can be reused).
Even if one uses electronics for as long as possible before upgrading (in which case most people want to future-proof by getting something higher end), do metal casings pose a sustainability problem? How does it compare to its main competitor, making casings out of plastic? Are there any other alternatives that are better than either? Maybe cast metal casings?
I’m thinking it’s most always the battery that gives up first and the lack of repairability in modern electronic devices renders phones and alike into paper weights. Landfill.
Fairphone works on fixing the repairability issue.
Metal, concrete and really also wood if utilized unwisely are all just plain destructive and mostly high energy materials. There is no such thing as environmentaly friendly metal or concrete.
Plastics may be a less destructive option for consumer electronics (satan vs. his cousin who may be worse). Reason being: if the case cracks you can tape it, no mountains had to be pulverized and molten and most likely something else gives before the case is in such a bad shape it renders the device unusable.
mm… banana leaf laptop.
My two kronor
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I guess the question in that case is if the energy required for recycled aluminum (which is starting to become more common thankfully) is outweighed by the effects of plastic, which includes microplastic contamination as you said, but also petroleum extraction and processing, which I’m not sure is better than aluminum mining.
Hemp plastic could be a solution though, and shows promise as structural plastic as opposed to just plastic bags and bottles. I wonder if the energy required is lower than recycled aluminum.