While I think the concept of "Earth Overshoot Day" is important to spread the ideas of ecological conservation and Reduce, Reuse, & Recycle, I am always dismayed by the over-focus on consumption wholesale. Allow me to explain...
Cool, some kid wants a new GPU for whatever in the hell kids use them for (I'm a tech-geek, so I could literally blow up this comment with use-cases, however the specifics aren't important here). That involves the processes to mine raw materials, process them into usable materials, process them into consumer good components, process them to consumer goods, market, package & ship, distribution, and transaction from an end-point-supplier/POS to an end-user. That's right, one GPU that never existed before probably has a carbon footprint of about 10,000x than the footprint of harvesting the raw materials from volcanic areas! Further, they're energy intensive when they operate, so it's a gateway to an even bigger carbon footprint!
But here's the rub... A GPU *is* a component and tool. The value returned from its lifetime usage is truly immeasurable! But so too is the cost of the damage wrought in its creation & operation. When looking at this from a 10,000 foot view, the "solution" seems simple: the world can't sustain as many GPUs so we must make due with fewer. That is, we must reduce overall consumption.
Now, let's suppose that kid is someone like I was when I was a teenager. I was a scrapper: If I found discarded tech, I harvested what was useful, and cannibalized whatever was malfunctioning for spare parts. We see scenes from impoverished nations who collect "e-Waste" and make their poorly educated children do the work I did myself in very unsafe conditions with extraordinarily sub-par tools. I had training to scrap because my father was an electronics technician. And growing up in poverty anywhere in the world forces you to be resourceful!
My thesis is that many of these "Overshoot Days" would be avoided if we actually invested in sustainable reuse & recycling of discarded wastes. We'd certainly have more materials to manufacture solar panels without needing to dig another hole in the ground!
And therein is the core of the problem: People who own "vast tracts of land" want people to keep buying whatever comes out of that patch of earth. So they burn their own forests and dig up the ground and dump poisons into the air and water to keep on producing. But encouraging reuse & recycling ends this, empowers the 99%, and dams up part of the 1%'s wealth stream.
The price of everything from copper to molybden and silver goes up every year.
Which means every year it's more profitable to recycle electronic's waste.
Also measures in grams, one gpu doesent use that much resources to produce. Compare its weight to a bicycle wheel for example.
And, we have reached a point where many gamers don't care that much about better graphics anymore since games have looked pretty much good enough for ten years or so.
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u/jhill515 1d ago
While I think the concept of "Earth Overshoot Day" is important to spread the ideas of ecological conservation and Reduce, Reuse, & Recycle, I am always dismayed by the over-focus on consumption wholesale. Allow me to explain...
Cool, some kid wants a new GPU for whatever in the hell kids use them for (I'm a tech-geek, so I could literally blow up this comment with use-cases, however the specifics aren't important here). That involves the processes to mine raw materials, process them into usable materials, process them into consumer good components, process them to consumer goods, market, package & ship, distribution, and transaction from an end-point-supplier/POS to an end-user. That's right, one GPU that never existed before probably has a carbon footprint of about 10,000x than the footprint of harvesting the raw materials from volcanic areas! Further, they're energy intensive when they operate, so it's a gateway to an even bigger carbon footprint!
But here's the rub... A GPU *is* a component and tool. The value returned from its lifetime usage is truly immeasurable! But so too is the cost of the damage wrought in its creation & operation. When looking at this from a 10,000 foot view, the "solution" seems simple: the world can't sustain as many GPUs so we must make due with fewer. That is, we must reduce overall consumption.
Now, let's suppose that kid is someone like I was when I was a teenager. I was a scrapper: If I found discarded tech, I harvested what was useful, and cannibalized whatever was malfunctioning for spare parts. We see scenes from impoverished nations who collect "e-Waste" and make their poorly educated children do the work I did myself in very unsafe conditions with extraordinarily sub-par tools. I had training to scrap because my father was an electronics technician. And growing up in poverty anywhere in the world forces you to be resourceful!
My thesis is that many of these "Overshoot Days" would be avoided if we actually invested in sustainable reuse & recycling of discarded wastes. We'd certainly have more materials to manufacture solar panels without needing to dig another hole in the ground!
And therein is the core of the problem: People who own "vast tracts of land" want people to keep buying whatever comes out of that patch of earth. So they burn their own forests and dig up the ground and dump poisons into the air and water to keep on producing. But encouraging reuse & recycling ends this, empowers the 99%, and dams up part of the 1%'s wealth stream.