5 August 2024 by Phillip Johnston • Last updated 28 August 2024
The e-waste our industry creates is a real problem. Engineers are responsible for this waste (as are others), and it is our duty to help address these problems. We have both helped produce hundreds of millions of electronic devices, and we must painfully face our own responsibility in helping create this problem. We do not want our community, our bodies, or our kids to be poisoned by pollution of any kind. It is no more excusable to poison the land and people in another country.
The question remains: what can we do? We cannot become luddites. We also cannot remain ignorant to the problems that our industry creates. Like all of our societal problems, this problem is much bigger than any individual. Yet, as the old proverb says: “If we don’t change our direction, we are likely to end up where we are headed.”
Change will not come if we wait for some other person, or if we wait for some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.
– BARACK OBAMA
E-Waste Reduction Ideas
This might feel like climate change: a problem that is too big for individuals to tackle. But we can all work on moving the needle in the right direction. Below you will find our collected high-level ideas that we want to start building upon. We’d love to hear and share your ideas as well!
- Individual Exploration
- Design Decisions
- Material and Component Choices
- Recycling Programs
- Local Action
As Dr. Jane Goodall says, “Remember that you make a difference every single day.” When we all start making better, more ethical choices, we move toward a better world. We hope you will join us and choose to make a difference, no matter how small you perceive it to be. Every individual matters.
Individual Exploration
- Vote with your feet and become selective about the projects you work on, ensuring they comply with your standards
- Ask ourselves, as Marylin Dryud highlights: “To initiate solutions, the international engineering community must first examine design: why do electronic products include such potentially damaging materials?” What can we do as engineers about our answers?
- Be willing to pay for electronics recycling through proper channels, rather than looking for “free” recyclers who end up illegally exporting or dumping our e-waste. Look for certified e-Stewards, the most rigorous standard for recyclers, who must adhere to international law on trade in hazardous waste.
Design Decisions
- Fight against the “planned obsolescence” virus. Design products for longevity. Planned obsolescence is not a business strategy that we will support.
- Lengthen support timelines to keep systems relevant for longer.
- Design products with more memory from the start!
- Memory is often something that gets over-optimized up front for cost, rather than for the longevity of the product. This premature optimization is so problematic and widespread that memory is often insufficient at the launch of the product.
- Support the Right to Repair, and increase the reparability and serviceability of the products we build.
- Like Blue Clover Devices, focus on designing products with reuse and recyclability in mind.
- Make your product easier to disassemble in order for different components to more easily recycled, and explore strategies like designing pieces of the system that can be composted at the end of their life (recall Blue Clover Devices’ experiments with untreated wood).
Material and Component Choices
- Voluntarily comply with RoHS standards even when we are not required to. RoHS aims to:
- Reduce the buildup of environmentally-harmful waste in landfills
- Protect manufacturing workers and recyclers from potential poisoning
- Achieve these goals by restricting specific metals and compounds
- Investigate alternative materials, such as wood or TPE (as an alternative to the problematic PVC)
- Incorporate recycled materials (e.g., recycled aluminum) into your product whenever possible, supporting the recycling industry
Recycling Programs
- Implement a program where customers can ship you old devices for free, which ensures that you can properly pass the materials to formal e-waste recycling stream.
- Price e-waste handling costs into your products
- Look for certified e-Stewards, the most rigorous standard for recyclers, who must adhere to international law on trade in hazardous waste.
Local Action
- Educating your local community about e-waste recycling options that are available to them
- Lobbying for stricter e-waste regulations in your local community and region
Further Reading
29 April 2023 by Phillip JohnstonWelcome to the May 2023 edition of the Embedded Artistry Industry Update. This is a monthly newsletter of curated and original content to help you build superior embedded systems. This newsletter supplements the website and covers topics not mentioned there. This month we’ll cover: CAN Injection attacks Nexx’s security debacle Bricking working devices by shutting down the servers A summary of other noteworthy industry news Technical articles from around the web Embedded job postings Updates to the Embedded Artistry Website CAN Injection for Auto Theft Ken Tindell published an article about his investigation into CAN …
Continue reading “May 2023: CAN Injection, Nexx, Sunsetting Servers”
13 February 2023 by Phillip JohnstonMicrosoft took steps to improve the energy efficiency of Xbox systems when not being used. We hope you will take note of this behavior and think about how to apply something similar in your own systems. Table of Contents: The Original Behavior The Changes Lessons for Designers References The Original Behavior Xbox devices that are plugged in and not being used can be placed into Sleep mode (also called “Instant On”). This mode lets users bypass the usual startup process when turning on the console. This mode, however, came with a cost: 10-15W in continual …
Continue reading “Case Study: Microsoft Changed Default Settings to Reduce Idle Power Consumption”
13 February 2023 by Phillip JohnstonResponsible designers optimize the power consumption of the devices they create. Table of Contents: Power Consumption Matters – Especially When Idle Possible Actions Regulatory Actions System Design Actions Case Studies References Power Consumption Matters – Especially When Idle Power is an ongoing cost of using a system. It is not a cost that is incurred by the manufacturer, but rather an ongoing burden assumed by the customer. Chargers are only so efficient, which further compounds the energy used to power our devices. Some products, such as major appliances, are required to publish yearly energy consumption …
Continue reading “Responsible Designers Optimize Energy Use”
9 February 2023 by Phillip JohnstonArs Technica ran a story that grabbed our attention: US school runs lights 24/7/365: The smart lights have been broken since 2021. In short: The lights at Massachusetts’ Minnechaug Regional High School burn ever bright. They actually never turn off. They can’t turn off. The smart lighting system for the entire building is broken, and it’s stuck in the “on” position. It has apparently been this way for over a year now, and the electric bills are really starting to pile up. […] The school’s entire “green lighting system,” some 7,000 lights, was installed over a decade ago …
Continue reading “Case Study: Automated Systems Require Manual Overrides”
8 February 2023 by Phillip Johnston • Last updated 2 October 2024
Google provided a positive Responsible Design case study in January 2023.
Google Stadia, Google’s attempt at a gaming ecosystem, was scheduled for shutdown on 18 Jan. When the shutdown was initially announced, there was the usual frustration related to losing a service that you rely on. But many Stadia users seemed particularly bothered by the fact that the perfectly fine Stadia controllers would be bricked. The Stadia controller worked over Wi-Fi, while every other gaming controller uses Bluetooth. Microsoft was open about the controller having a Bluetooth chip, though support was never enabled in software.
Google eventually responded to this concern. The company released a tool to enable Bluetooth support in the Stadia Controller. This is a one-way transformation, although it can still be used in wired mode with any games that expect the Wi-Fi controller. The tool will be supported until the end of the year, giving users plenty of time to make the switch.
Later, Google extended the server that supported the conversion tool for an additional year, providing a longer window for users to complete the conversion.
Responsible designers do not brick devices unnecessarily. Rather than becoming e-waste, the controllers can continue to be used with other games and ecosystems. Can you put similar mitigation plans in place for your products?
References
29 April 2022 by Phillip JohnstonOn April 15, Insteon users started reporting that their Insteon app was down and their hub devices could no longer connect to the company’s servers. Nobody heard anything from the company, and its Twitter account has not been active since June 2021. Stacey Higginbotham reached out to the CEO for comment, when she noticed that the management team was no longer working at the company, and many had scrubbed the company from their LinkedIn profiles: After reading those reports, I went online and discovered that, according to their LinkedIn bios, no one from the SmartLabs/Insteon management team was still working …
Continue reading “Case Study: Insteon’s Abrupt Shutdown”
22 December 2021 by Phillip Johnston • Last updated 29 April 2022Responsible Design is not limited to those practices which are involved in creating a product. The support we provide for our products also plays a significant role. The better we can support our devices, the longer they can remain usefully functional and stay out of landfills. Ways responsible designers can improve product support: Publish product support lifetimes so that customers know what to expect Create an indefinite support plan, ensuring that someone can support your product even if your company writes it off Do not brick devices unnecessarily: create …
Continue reading “Responsible Designers Support Their Devices”
30 November 2021 by Phillip Johnston • Last updated 2 October 2024
When reading or talking about climate change, pollution, ecosystem destruction, resource use, or any other societal scale issues, there is a pervasive (and possibly engineered) feeling of helplessness that is used to justify inaction. But our helplessness is an illusion. We all affect the flow of history and civilization with our actions, no matter how small they may seem to us – everything we do ripples out into the world.
As the people who build the devices consumed by the world, our actions certainly have a meaningful impact. We have a responsibility to initiate change and move product designs and lifecycle management in a positive direction. It’s up to us – there’s nobody else to do this work on our behalf. This entry is dedicated to collecting material that will help product designers and engineers become more responsible product designers.
You see, the challenges we face will not be solved with one meeting in one night […] Change will not come if we wait for some other person or if we wait for some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.
– Barack Obama, 5 Feb 2008 Speech
Responsible product design considers the following factors throughout the product development lifecycle:
- Waste Reduction
- Repairability
- Circularity
- Graceful degradation
- Energy efficiency
- Working on what matters, not just creating a product for the purpose of making you rich
Table of Contents:
- Industry Problems
- Responsible Design Techniques
- Standards
- Case Studies
- References
Industry Problems
Responsible Design Techniques
These are specific techniques that we believe responsible product designers should adopt:
- Support your devices (explores a number of different support strategies)
- Optimize energy use
- Prefer recycled aluminum in your products
- Use more wood in your designs
- Prefer TPE over PVC in your products
- Source power from renewable sources
- Design electronics to be repairable
- Use non-plastic packaging
- Prevent toxic materials from entering the environment
- Address privacy concerns with remote debugging capabilities
Standards
Case Studies
References
18 October 2021 by Phillip Johnston • Last updated 3 August 2023
Responsible designers do not brick devices unnecessarily, even when they no longer want to support them.
Back in 2020, we reported on Sonos’ despicable end-of-life strategy for its products – an irreversible “recycle mode” that they encourage customers to use. Unfortunately, this “recycle” mode actually bricks devices and renders them unusable, guaranteeing that owners and e-waste recyclers are forced to landfill them instead of reselling or reusing the products.
In December 2019, an employee of an e-waste recycler pointed out how the “Recycle Mode” was in violation of their claimed focus on “Sustainability”.
This is the most environmentally unfriendly abuse and waste of perfectly good hardware I’ve seen in five years working at a recycler.
We could have sold these, and ensured they were reused, as we do with all the working electronics we’re able. Now we have to scrap them.
Prior to the public backlash in 2020, Sonos previously stated that “Sustainability is non-negotiable” and a core value of the company. They also advertised their “Recycling Mode” as a sustainability practice. This is not sustainable: they’re essentially just making trash out of a perfectly working system.
Graceful degradation is certainly possible. Devices do not need to stop functioning completely simply because we are using older hardware or slower network connections. Perhaps you limit the capabilities to match what the hardware supports. Perhaps customers cannot take advantage of the latest and greatest features. But that is no excuse for completely breaking a product. What if some enterprising person has a use for the device that you haven’t thought of? What if people who don’t have access to the latest and greatest technology would still be blown away by the device’s capabilities?
Responsible designers have a long-term support plan for their products. And, more importantly, you need to communicate the plan to your customers.
References
- This concept was derived from our article Bricked for Want of Support
- Case Study: Sonos’s End-of-Life Strategy
- Responsible designers have an indefinite support plan
- George Dinwiddie on Twitter
How often do you get a new phone or computer because your old one is too slow for current software or not supported by new operating systems?
This cycle of obsolescence drives a huge amount of electric trash in our landfills, but also locks a lot of poor people out of the technology that so much modern life requires. What if you couldn’t afford that constant upgrade cycle?
As technologists, I think we have a responsibility to make things degrade gracefully on older hardware and slower network connections. At the very least, we shouldn’t take away capabilities that existed when that hardware was new.
- Plan for death at the start of building your connected device – Stacey on IoT | Internet of Things news and analysis
It starts with the design. When designing the physical product, designers need to think about graceful degradation. Put physical buttons on the device. Make sure the product functions as a bike, a juicer, an oven, or whatever else even if the additional software-based or connected features fail. When it comes to making decisions about the chips and services used in the hardware, consider ongoing maintenance costs and how long that hardware will get necessary security updates.
