This no name powerbank with solar charging came in for recycling and it is anything but powerful. The battery is swollen and the case is bowed because of it.
It is quite dishonest of the manufacturer to put such a small battery in a large enclosure. Not only could the battery be taller but it could also be thicker. There are two foam rubber spacers used to fill the empty space in the enclosure.
The purchaser would be quite unaware of the small battery size and would assume that a physically large enclosure would equate to a larger energy capacity than a smaller one. If I find a suitable battery I would be able to more than double the capacity of the powerbank.
Please everybody, avoid products that are of such bad quality that the manufacturer is too scared to put their name on it!
A Visione VISDVD5820 DVD player came in for recycling and since it has a HDMI output I thought I may as well have a go at refurbishing it. They are budget brand and as we will see you really get what you pay for. It seems to be a brand name used by Harvey Norman.
The batteries in the remote had leaked and caused really bad corrosion on one of the battery terminals to the point of almost completely rusting the retaining spring! Also, there were splatters of solder left on the circuit board from when the battery terminals were manually soldered in place in the factory.
A quick internet search showed that this fault has has happened to others. They sold for $29 and $18 and as low as $9! There is no point doing any repairs on it so off it goes to be dismantled.
It is a shame that this sort of poor quality equipment with poor quality batteries is being sold. This sort of stuff is short lived enough as it is because of the rapid change in technology.
This week is Techweek, an annual talkfest here in New Zealand about the future of technology. But there is something that they are not talking about. I’ll jabber on a bit before making my point.
I like technology. Especially electronics. I have been playing with it and fixing it for a long time. I find it all really interesting.
Unfortunately most technology has a dark side. In the case of e-technology one of the problems is getting the stuff recycled. It is changing at a great rate of knots and so the older stuff gets chucked out. It is not surprising that it is a big part of the rubbish going to the landfill.
There are some interesting things happening in labs around the world that may fix the e-waste problem but that it going to take a while. In the meantime we have to process all of the e-junk in an environmentally friendly way.
So I would like to ask the Techweek organisers why they have not included any items on e-waste in their programme?
We really are in a throwaway society. We have been calling it that since the 1950s and all of this technology of ours is an increasing part of the throwaway society.
I had a Canon PIXMA MG2960 ink jet printer/scanner come in for recycling. I can’t find any date code on it without stripping it down but it looked brand spanking new.
Apparently the paper was not feeding. I was going to see if it was fixable but it had no ink cartridges. I then jumped online and checked it out. It sells for a mere $32.99! And it is still a current model! I did know that these low end inkjet printers are cheap but I just can’t get used to the idea of these low prices. These printers sell for less than the minimum service fee that most repair companies charge out.
This is nothing new of course. Back in the early 2000s I worked for a company that did a lot of printer repairs, including low end inkjets. The minimum service fee was $33.75. It got to the stage that we had to charge that fee up front because we were left with too many cheap inkjet printers that the customers did not want to have repaired. So not only was the company out of pocket for the time taken to do the diagnostics for a quote but there was also the disposal cost of the unwanted printer.
It is easy to see why the amount of e-waste is rising and the repair industry is in decline. We really are in a throwaway society.
I am a bit pedantic about words and I sometimes find the English language a bit messy and illogical. Anyway, I was compiling a glossary in our knowledge base for the work that we do and I remembered that there are some words which don’t officially exist yet.
Here at Ecotech Services we commonly describe our business activity as “repair, refurbishment, and recycling of electrical, electronic, and computer equipment.” I can see the potential for a new word here to make the phrase less of a mouthful.
Now computers are just a particular type of electronic equipment so it is really a redundant word in our description but we put it in there because computers are seen by a lot of people as being separate to electronics stuff. People often get confused about the correct terminology to use for technology.
Customers sometime describe a desktop computer box as a hard drive whereas in actual fact the hard drive is just one of the assemblies in the box. And that reminds me of my more youthful days back in the ’70s and ’80s. Back then – in an era pre-dating Walkmans, boomboxes, MP3 players, and now smartphones – we relied on radios to get music and information. The portable radios were often called “transistors” which is a misnomer for the correct term of transistorised radios.
So getting back to 21st century language I think we need just one word that describes “electrical, electronic, and computer equipment” because all this stuff uses electricity. I think the word should be “e-technology ” and it can be shortened to e-tech.
There are a lot of other e-words in my job – e-mail, e-waste, e-scrap, e-cycling (but we should use e-recycling because this does not make it sound like an electric bike), and now I can add e-tech. And I guess I am an e-technician. An e-techie. And Ecotech Services does e-repair and e-recycling of e-technology.
This is a packet from a McDonald’s Princess Bubblegum Happymeal toy:
It had blown off the street into our driveway.
The bag is made in China, the contents are made in Vietnam, and it is distributed in New Zealand and Australia.
There are some pretty strong parallels between this incident and the whole e-waste problem. That is a long bow to draw you might say so let me explain. A lot of cheap commodity electronics items are made in China from parts made there and elsewhere. They are distributed around the world. At the end of their useful life they are discarded, sometimes on roadsides.
To me it also epitomises the uncaring, wasteful society in which we live.
E-waste processing is shifting polluting industries from the developed to the developing world, as illustrated by this infographic from Nature. This has been happening for a number of decades (and credit goes to BAN and others in bringing it to the attention of the public) and over that time has spread to additional countries.
In a referendum on 23 June 2016 the voting public of the UK chose to leave the EU with 52% wanting to leave and 48% wanting to remain. This will possibly have implications on addressing the many negative environmental and social effects of electrical, electronics, and computer technology.
The EU has long been on the global forefront of policies that promote sustainable technologies. One of the earlier Directives draw up by the European Economic Community on limiting waste led to a Directive on battery recycling. Anecdotal evidence from European tourists in New Zealand suggest that it has produced a culture of battery recycling. The tourists are astounded that there is no means of easily having their batteries recycled while in New Zealand. Amongst other things the EU is now working on policies that include trying to address conflict minerals and developing the idea of a Circular Economy.
Thanks to the EU the Micro B USB plug is now a common standard on phones, tablets, and e-book readers.
EU policies have had a global reach. Here in New Zealand I can think of two that have had an effect. One of them would be noticed by electronics engineers and technicians every time they order a part since they are often specified with the RoHS compliance information. RoHS is the EU Restriction of Hazardous Substances Directive limiting the levels of toxic materials contained in products.
Another effect of the EU, which many people can see on a daily basis, is the micro B USB connector used on a large number of mobile phones and other portable electronic devices. As an attempt to reduce the environmental impact of the large number of incompatible chargers the EU proposed a Directive to force standardisation onto the manufacturers. Most of the manufacturers banded together and responded by developing a Memorandum of Understanding to hamonise portable device charges based on the micro B USB connector.
In correspondence earlier this year with the Minister for the Environment Nick Smith said that there are no plans at present to emulate EU policies such as reducing hazardous materials contained in products (as per the EC RoHS), identification and the possible ban of the importation of conflict minerals, development of a Circular Economy, priority product status, producer responsibility, or product stewardship for electrical, electronic, and computer devices (addition to what is currently being done), adopting a universal charging standard for mobile devices, mandatory battery recycling, or adoption of an Integrated Product Policy. As a country we are at least twenty five years behind the EU in terms of technology related environmental policy and this is another black mark against so called clean green New Zealand.
Because it is a significant player an exit by the UK from the EU waters down the the strength of the EU bloc and there is also a possibility that other countries may follow. Given the level of disruption, the level of dissatisfaction with the referendum result, and that it is nonbinding it is possible that a Brexit may not actually happen.
With the global environmental, social, and economic issues with which we face there is a strong need for a supranational organisation with governance that is acceptable to every nation-state.
In a referendum on 23 June 2016 the voting public of the UK chose to leave the EU with 52% wanting to leave and 48% wanting to remain. This will possibly have implications on addressing the many negative environmental and social effects of electrical, electronics, and computer technology.