전자 폐기물 줄이기: 지속 가능한 스마트폰 및 전자제품 설계

### 글로벌 전자 폐기물 위기: 지속 가능한 미래를 위한 전자제품 재설계
* 📱 매년 전 세계적으로 **17억 대 이상의 스마트폰이 판매**되고 있지만, "손에 들고 있는 것보다 훨씬 더 많은 것을 구매하고 있다"고 할 수 있습니다.
* 🌍 전자 폐기물은 **매년 5,000만 톤 이상 발생**하는 전 세계적으로 점점 더 커지고 있는 거대한 문제입니다.
* 🔄 이 문제를 해결하려면 **디바이스를 더 쉽게 업그레이드하고, 고칠 수 있고, 재활용할 수 있도록 설계**해야 합니다.
* 🌐 전자 폐기물의 상당 부분이 '새 생명을 준다'는 명목으로 전 세계로 운송되지만, 결국 **매립지로 가는 경우**가 많습니다.
* 🛠 전자 스튜어드 재활용 업체는 **더 안전하고 환경 친화적인 재활용**을 위해 엄격한 관행을 적용합니다.
* 📉 제조업체는 일반적으로 전자제품을 오래 사용할 수 있도록 설계하지 않기 때문에 **계획된 노후화**가 발생합니다.
* 🌱 테라큐브와 같은 스타트업은 **내구성이 뛰어나고 수리가 쉬운 장치**를 개발하여 보다 지속 가능한 대안을 제시하고 있습니다.

제조업체는 전 세계적으로 증가하는 전자 폐기물 문제를 억제하기 위해 업그레이드 가능성, 수리 가능성 및 재활용 가능성을 고려하여 전자 제품을 설계해야 합니다.

(slow upbeat music) - Worldwide, 1.7 billion smartphones are sold in one year. - What you're buying is so much more than what's in your hand. You're buying a lot of impacts. The model we have in our capitalist world is to sell you stuff, right? - E-waste, or electronic waste, is a huge global problem that's growing every year. But fixing it is gonna take more than telling people they shouldn't upgrade their phones. - Manufacturers have convinced everybody that recycling is benign. Don't worry, buy it, just recycle it, not a problem, and they're designing things for the dump, basically. - To stop toxic e-waste from piling up by the millions of tons, our devices need to be built to be more upgradable, more fixable, and more recyclable. The question is, can we redesign our devices to have the best in tech and the best for our planet? Smartphones, computers, monitors.

everything internet of things. Once they're thrown
out, they become e-waste, and the world is generating
e-waste at an alarming clip. I could give you numbers, but they're so astronomically
they won't mean much. More than 50 million metric tons every year are produced, and that's growing. While most of us stop
thinking about our smartphones around the time the battery gives out, Jim Puckett, founder of
the Basel Action Network, is most concerned with
everything that happens to them afterwards. If you can imagine people
get rid of their computers every three years, maybe they get rid of their phones
about every two years. Just multiply that by
every human on earth. It's a mountain, a very
large mountain of e-waste. ♪ Gotta learn to reduce, reuse, recycle. ♪ Reduce, reuse, recycle
is a nice term of art, but the reduction side of it, which is the most important,
is always forgotten.

It all ends up recycling. Probably about half of
your old electronics go to the global South, and it's justified by saying, well, we're gonna give it another life. They can fix it in the market there, which sounds really good. But a lot of the time, they can't fix it. Sometimes the components
inside our devices wear out too quickly or are stuck together with glue instead of screws to make them a hair thinner
than the competition. Instead of finding a second
life in the global South, our toxic e-waste might
find its way to a landfill. We knew that we had to track this waste to really tell the story about it. We did a program where
we went out to recyclers in the US and dropped computing equipment with a GPS tracker inserted into it. What they found was pretty incredible. 40% of the e-waste that
was supposed to be recycled in the US got shipped
to junkyards overseas. There's no pollution control.

and most of these are in Southeast Asia, in farmlands, so they're contaminating a lot of the local food supply. - BAN went public with their GPS data. - Blew people's minds because
they were like caught, and of course, it's made the industry really behave a lot better. Now we have a program called E-Stewards, which is a certification
program for the good guys. - The process still isn't perfect, but the E-Stewards recyclers employ a number of strict practices to make recycling safer and more environmentally friendly. Cascade Asset Management is one of those E-Stewards recyclers. - We process about
300,000 to 400,000 pounds of electronics per month, so we're moving a lot of
equipment through here. - Cascade is able to fix and
resell 30% of its inventory before recycling even comes into play. But the pace of change
in today's technology can be hard to keep up with. - We're starting to see
a lot more smartphones

and tablets coming through, some items maybe only
two or three years old, and there's no life left in them. - When I grew up, you'd buy a toaster or refrigerator would
last at least 20 years, but the manufacturers
don't design the equipment to last a long time, so in effect, they're
planning its obsolescence. Sure, electronics change quickly, but they can anticipate upgrades. Do we really need to have
things die so quickly? - You've probably been told before that you should buy less stuff, that you should consume more consciously, but in order to empower
consumers to make that choice, manufacturers need to design
things to last longer. Right now, that's a tough sell to most of the big companies
making our electronics, but some startups are taking notice. - I've been in the electronics industry for the last 11 years, and I realized there's hardly any repair. Let's say if I were to buy a new device, the charging port stops working,

but it's almost like a moral dilemma. Do I get this repaired,
or do I buy a new device? - Sharad Mittal, founder
of the smartphone company Teracube, saw a third option. Make a phone that's actually
built to last a long time and easy to repair. The result is a device that's much more environmentally friendly. - Teracube 2e. It works
like any other smartphone. It's an Android smartphone, runs all the apps that are available from Google Play store. We have put in recycled plastics
into the body of the phone. The unique feature is the four-year payment care warranty. There's no glue used, so
anyone can take them apart, and we'll make the spare parts available so people can do their
own repairs as well. - Modular components and durable materials are just a couple of ways manufacturers can help consumers stay current without throwing their entire device away. Organizations like iFixit are also encouraging more companies
to make technical guides.

and spare phone parts
available to every user in order to encourage people
to repair their own devices. - You know, we think
we live in a democracy, but what we're able to buy, that changes our world more
than politics, believe it or not. Everything is becoming
electronic these days. Can't we make things last longer and still have innovation? - Us building the Teracube,
we've shown that it's possible. We are here to make a change. (slow upbeat music) Hey, thanks for watching this video. If you liked it, share it with some friends.  And check out Freethink.com for more stories of people  moving the world.

The Ugly Truth About Toxic E-Waste

Exploring the collision of technology, business and society. Curious / Thoughtful / Open / Constructive. Changing media with @bigthink. 



Freethink

스마트폰 소비가 전자 폐기물에 미치는 영향

- 매년 전 세계적으로 17억 대의 스마트폰이 판매되고 있으며, 이로 인해 전자 폐기물 문제가 점점 더 심각해지고 있습니다.

- 끊임없이 기기를 업그레이드하는 현재의 자본주의 모델은 제조업체들이 '재활용하고 잊어버리자'는 사고방식을 조장하면서 전자 폐기물 위기를 부추기고 있습니다.

- 전자 폐기물 문제를 해결하려면 업그레이드, 수리, 재활용이 가능한 기기를 설계하여 지속적인 소비에서 감소와 지속 가능성으로 초점을 전환해야 합니다.

전자 폐기물 재활용에서 글로벌 사우스의 역할

전 세계의 많은 폐전자제품이 새 생명을 얻는다는 명목으로 해외로 보내지지만, 대부분 매립지로 보내져 현지 식량 공급을 오염시키고 있습니다.

GPS 추적기를 사용한 한 프로그램에 따르면 미국에서 재활용되어야 할 전자 폐기물의 40%가 실제로는 해외 폐차장으로 운송되는 것으로 밝혀졌습니다.

이에 따라 BAN은 데이터를 공개하고 보다 안전하고 환경 친화적인 재활용 관행을 장려하기 위해 E-스튜어드 인증 프로그램을 설립했습니다.

오늘날의 전자제품은 계획된 단종으로 설계되어 빠른 회전율을 보이지만, Teracube와 같은 일부 스타트업은 이를 바꾸고 있습니다.

오래 사용할 수 있고 쉽게 수리할 수 있도록 설계된 스마트폰인 Teracube 2e는 4년간의 지불 관리 보증을 제공하며 재활용 플라스틱을 사용합니다.

모듈형 부품을 사용하고 기술 가이드를 제공함으로써 제조업체는 소비자가 전자 폐기물을 줄이고 기기를 더 오래 사용할 수 있도록 도울 수 있습니다.

접근 가능한 휴대폰 부품으로 기기 수리 장려하기

Teracube는 사용자 수리를 위한 휴대폰 부품의 접근성을 높여 기기의 수명을 연장하는 것을 목표로 합니다.

이들은 우리가 소비하는 물건의 영향이 정치보다 세상에 더 큰 영향을 미친다고 믿습니다.

이 회사의 이니셔티브는 전자기기의 수명을 연장하는 동시에 혁신을 촉진할 수 있는 가능성을 보여줍니다.