It’s important that everyone Reduce, Reuse, Recycle properly in order to reduce our impact to the environment.
Do you really need to replace your perfectly functional doorbell with a big pile of electronics? Probably not. Would not driving to work every day make a bigger contribution? Yes. Would not doing either be best? Yes.
[1] https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/global-greenhouse-gas-emiss...
LED bulbs are comically more efficient than incandescent bulbs (by a factor of 5-10), which in turn are comically more efficient (by 10-50 times) than like a candle or oil lamp. “Simple” is actually a terrible heuristic for “low ecological impact.”
You are missing the point and mischaracterising the problem. Resources are finite. Human attention spans are limited. Emissions from ships in international waters are an absolutely huge problem and addressing that will make a huge impact on future climate.
Funny how no one mentions that but we are all focused on paper straws and smart doorbells.
I believe the argument is about the refining process and the chemical waste it creates, which is substantially higher when trying to extract 99.99% pure copper, zinc, gold, silver and other industrial elements which are converted into electronics. I'm a hobbyist fan of silver and know just the basics - refining for 99.99% pure silver looks like making crack to my eyes. :) Breaking Bad level chemicals.
I'm to understand the act of creating and "washing" circuit boards also uses a large amount of caustic chemicals, as does the attempted recycling/recovery (to basically eat away the coatings to expose the reclaimable metals). Refining for purity has a high environmental cost to get it from ore -> 99.99% and to reuse/recycle it, I speculate much higher than iron ore (train tracks, etc.) require/use.
99.99%, even if you’re right, only gets us to 10kg equivalent if you start with 1 gram.
(And keep in mind that these processes to make bulk materials themselves use alloying agents and specialty materials in cutting heads, etc, to fabricate them.)
Yeay?
Use a reusable water bottle. One can be had for the price of those 2x500ml bottles.
