I agree with the criticism but direct action is better than passive action by boycott, but it is also better than nothing.
More specifically, the project participants and their partners will focus their work on four areas:
(1) Raw and advanced materials : The project aims to develop sustainable innovative processes allowing extraction, concentration, refining and purification of ores to generate high-purity raw materials. With respect to advanced materials (such as cathodes, anodes and electrolytes), the project aims to enhance existing materials or create new ones, to be used in innovative battery cells.
(2) Cells and modules : The project aims todevelop [sic] innovative cells and modules designed to meet the safety, and performance required for both automotive and non-automotive applications (e.g. stationary energy storage, power tools, etc.).
(3) Battery systems : The project aims to develop innovative battery systems including battery management software and algorithms as well as innovative test methods.
(4) Repurposing, recycling and refining : The project aims to design safe and innovative processes for collection, dismantling, repurposing, recycling and refining of recycled materials.
1 Like
Does the Fairphone have cobalt in the battery from Congolese child mines? I sincerely hope not. I think this is appalling and I hope this lawsuit is successful. This is a broken system we have to care about fixing. Its so sad.
2 Likes
6 Likes
Fighting this was part of the start of the Fairphone project:
2010
Started as an awareness campaign about conflict minerals
While conflict-free does not equal fairtrade or no child labor, the working-conditions and payment for miners was a relevant point from the beginning.
7 Likes
4 Likes
An article about ethical laptops
Found in this article (mostly) about the Fairphone
3 Likes
Even the celebrated iameco is among the worst offenders for supply chain management, which incorporates workersā rights across the long networks that assemble digital products.
We really need a fair laptop. Or go for refurbished, e.g. Refurbished Laptops: gebraucht & erneuert in 
.
2 Likes
Other refurbished IT at:
1 Like
2 Likes
Fairtronics ā A Tool for Analyzing the Fairness of Electronic Devices
Electronic gadgets come not just with an ecological footprint, but also a human cost of bad working conditions and human rights violations. To support hardware makers who want to design fairer devices, we are building a software tool to easily discover social risk hotspots and identify measures for improvement.
The issue of human rights violations in the supply chains of electronics products is nowadays being broadly discussed. However, from the point of view of a hardware maker, it is difficult to exclude the possibiltiy of harm being done to workers in their supply chains due to their complexity and lack of transparency. At the same time, projects such as Fairphone and NagerIT demonstrate that improvements are, in fact, possible.
At FairLƶtet and the Fairtronics project, we try to support those who would like to improve the social impact of their products in taking the first step towards improvement. To this end, we are building a software tool which will provide a first estimate of the risks contained within a given design: circuit diagram in, analysis out.
The analysis shows the main social risks associated with the product, due to which components and materials they arise, and in what regions of the world the risks are located. This enables the user to understand where efforts towards sustainability should be concentrated, e.g. by making informed purchasing decisions or engaging with suppliers.
In this talk, you will learn about the risks associated with electronics, how they are estimated, and what data we gather to compute them. No deep background in sustainability or hardware is required.
https://media.ccc.de/v/36c3-10592-fairtronics
Available in 
, , and
(I havenāt seen the video yet, as I am currently very busy.)
[EDIT]Project website: https://fairtronics.org[/EDIT]
4 Likes
Precious Plastic 4 released
Shared January 7, 2020
The Precious Plastic Universe is our masterplan to create a global solution to tackle the plastic waste problem. In this video weāll explain the ins and outs of our alternative plastic recycling system. Weāll explain about machines, business plans products, digital infrastructures and how you can get involved and be part of the solution in your community.
Learn more on: https://preciousplastic.com/
Precious Plastic is a project researching and developing new solutions to tackle the plastic waste problem. We offer recycling machines, techniques to recycle plastic, business models to make a business from recycling and digital infrastructures to connect tens of thousands recyclers around the world. And all this is shared online under a Creative Common Attribution, for free so more people can start tackling the plastic waste problem.
MNT Research heeft ontwerp van makkelijk te repareren modulaire laptop gereed. It is about a modular laptop. (Article in Dutch, links in article in English.)
Quote from English article:
When not connected to a wall adapter, Reform is powered by 8x 18650 LiFePO4 battery cells. Each has a nominal voltage of 3.2V, and all cells are linked in series, which means an operating voltage of 28.8V. This arrangement has the upside that we can monitor and balance each cell individually. You donāt have to factory-match cells like you would have to in a parallel arrangement. You can buy replacement cells for Reform for around 2.50 EUR. The LiFePO4 chemistry trades some energy density for many advantages:
High current source capability with no thermal runaway (the cells donāt get hot).
Relatively high number of charge cycles without degradation (around 2000).
Smaller environmental impact.
At the end, Google Play Services were not so importantā¦ I think this may shape up the future of Android in a different direction.
1 Like
Complete with 3D prints for enclosure (also contains pictures).
Another win for FOSS hardware.
2 Likes
Criptographic algorithm implementations are ad-hoc until they get the hardware ones to work, but this is a good news for DIY peeps!
Beijing (Reuters) - Tesla is in advanced stages of talks to use batteries from CATL that contain no cobalt - one of the most expensive metals in electric vehicle (EV) batteries - in cars made at its China plant, people familiar with the matter said
To boost the density and safety of its LFP batteries, CATL has been working on its so-called cell-to-pack technology, the people told Reuters.
The use of LFP batteries will also help Chief Executive Elon Musk meet a 2018 promise that Tesla would cut the use of cobalt - which costs some $33,500 a tonne - to āalmost nothingā.
Tesla plans to host a battery event, probably in April, to share its future battery strategy and technology, Musk said at an earnings conference in January.
My 2 ct: Iām getting increasingly annoyed by the recycling of plastics because of all the rules what goes where, which plastic can be recycled, which canāt. It isnāt user-friendly at all, and since local governments each have different rules if you are visiting someone or are at work or even in a train thereās suddenly different rules. If we want people to reduce waste, we need to figure out a user-friendly way to do so.
2 Likes
The common ground should be: We should get rid of the use of plastics as much as we can and restrict the use to cases where thereās really no alternative (e.g. medicinal uses).
Recycling is good, but the handling of plastics in that regard, often meaning the non-handling of it, will get us nowhere meaningful, it seems.
We have to somehow get most of this stuff out of the environment and out of the food chain.
3 Likes
What for? I got used to the taste of ĀµPlastic. Well known rule - donāt change old habitsā¦ 
No, serious what gets me annoyed more and more is the ongoing pollution I can witness.
There are ugly places where people simply leave their waste behind thatās being scattered over time and hardly one cares about it. But also I have to blame some city administrations as some places only have a countable quantity of public waste bins so people not necessarily have proper options to dispose their waste and rather drop it instead of keeping it until the next disposal opportunity.
But again I can see that citizens obviously misuse such public bins to decrease their own private disposal volume for free.
Next is the fact that so called āorganic plasticā actually is misleading customers to believe that they are doing much better to the environment although this type of plastic is only a small step away from the main problem.