Enlarge / From magnets we came, to magnets we return. (credit: Garner Products)

There is the mental image that most people have of electronics recycling, and then there is the reality, which is shredding.

Less than 20 percent of e-waste even makes it to recycling. That which does is, if not acquired through IT asset disposition (ITAD) or spotted by a worker who sees some value, heads into the shredder for raw metals extraction. If you've ever toured an electronics recycling facility, you can see for yourself how much of your stuff eventually gets chewed into little bits , whether due to design, to unprofitable reuse markets, or sheer volume concerns.

Traditional hard drives have some valuable things inside them—case, cover, circuit boards, drive assemblies, actuators, and rare-earth magnets—but only if they avoid the gnashing teeth. That's where the DiskMantler comes in. Garner Products, a data elimination firm, has a machine that it claims can process 500 hard drives (the HDD kind) per day in a way that leaves a drive separated into those useful components. And the DiskMantler does this by shaking the thing to death (video).

(credit: Getty Images)

Apple has always had a strong preference that only its own parts be used in repairs, but only if they're brand-new. Now, soon after Oregon passed a repair bill forbidding devices from rejecting parts with software locks, or " parts pairing ," Apple says it will allow for used Apple parts in future iPhone repairs.

While noting that "pairing" is "critical to preserving the privacy, security, and safety of an iPhone," Apple states that it has worked for two years to allow for reusing Face ID and Touch ID sensors (i.e., biometric sensors) as well as moving part calibration from its remote repair certification tools onto the iPhone itself. As a result, "select iPhone models" this fall will allow for reusing biometric sensors and other parts, and anyone ordering parts from Apple can skip sending a device's serial number, so long as the repair doesn't involve a new main logic board.

The new policy "is designed to maintain an iPhone user's privacy, security, and safety, while offering consumers more options, increasing product longevity, and minimizing the environmental impact of a repair," according to Apple's release.

Enlarge / The Fairbuds and their replaceable components, including the notably hand-friendly, non-soldered batteries. (credit: Fairphone)

Fairphone has spent years showing us that it could do what major phone manufacturers suggest is impossible: make a modern-looking phone, make it brazenly easy to open up, design it so battery swaps are something you could do on lunch break, and also provide software support for an unbelievable eight to 10 years .

Bluetooth headphones, specifically wireless earbuds, seemed destined to never receive this kind of eco-friendly, ownership-oriented upgrade, in large part because of how small they are. But the Fairbuds have arrived, and Fairphone has made them in its phones' image. They're only available in the EU at the moment, for 149 euro (or roughly $160 USD). Like the Fairphone 4, there's a chance interest could bring them to the US.

The highlights include:

Enlarge / 30 minutes in near-boiling water, and those soldered chips come right off, leaving you with something that's non-toxic, compostable, and looking like something from your grandparent's attic. (credit: Infineon)

Right now, the destination for the circuit board inside a device you no longer need is almost certainly a gigantic shredder, and that's the best-case scenario.

Most devices that don't have resale or reuse value end up going into the shredder—if they even make it into the e-waste stream. After their batteries are (hopefully removed, the shredded boards pass through magnets, water, and incineration, to pull specific minerals and metals out of the boards. The woven fiberglass and epoxy resin the boards were made from aren't worth much after they're sliced up, so they end up as waste. That waste is put in landfills, burned, or sometimes just stockpiled.

That's why, even if it's still in its earliest stages, something like the Soluboard sounds so promising. UK-based Jiva Materials makes printed circuit boards (PCBs) from natural fibers encased in a non-toxic polymer that dissolves in hot water. That leaves behind whole components previously soldered onto the board, which should be easier to recover.

Enlarge / Very few modern smartphones can be considered to have a "readily removable" battery, but the Fairphone 4 is one of them. (credit: Fairphone)

Whenever regulation passes that seems to herald the dawn of a new age of repairable devices, there is almost always a catch, a loophole, or at least an "it depends." In the case of recent headline-grabbing battery legislation out of the European Union, we're waiting to see what counts as "readily" when it comes to removing and replacing device batteries.

Last week, the European Parliament voted overwhelmingly in favor of new rules for handling batteries of all sizes in the EU , due to be implemented within 3.5 years of passage or as early as 2027. Along with measures addressing carbon footprints for electric vehicle and industrial batteries and stricter waste and recycling targets, there was a particular line in Article 11 regarding the "Removability and replaceability of portable batteries," that likely got smartphone, tablet, and laptop manufacturer lobbyists moving:

Portable batteries incorporated in appliances shall be readily removable and replaceable by the end-user or by independent operators during the lifetime of the appliance, if the batteries have a shorter lifetime than the appliance, or at the latest at the end of the lifetime of the appliance.

"Readily replaceable," as addressed in the next paragraph, is when, after removing a battery, you can substitute a similar battery "without affecting the functioning or the performance of that appliance." For all the things specifically defined, outlined, and estimated in the 129-page "COM(2020) 798 final," there's not much more about what the phrase exactly means.

Enlarge (credit: Ron Amadeo)

David Hamp-Gonsalves had two things quite a few people have these days: old phones lying around and a slowly building desire to get another Raspberry Pi for a quirky personal project.

The project this time was a personal music streaming server (detailed in full on GitHub ). While Pi inventories are slowly improving , they're still not quite what they were, as a glance at rpilocator shows . What is far more readily available is the old Samsung Galaxy S7 phone in your drawer. Hamp-Gonsalves had one with a broken charging port, and a friend had another one with a bad battery, and one transplant later, he had a test model.

You can read David's full post for the details (which we first saw at Hackaday ). The gist is that he tried three solutions, with varying degrees of fiddling and success, to get the Navidrome personal music service running:

Enlarge / One of the species identified in this work. (credit: Thomas Brück)

Demand for rare-earth elements is growing and may reach 315,000 tons by 2030. Meanwhile, more than 40 million tons of e-waste—trashed computers, cell phones, and other electronics—is generated each year. Some of that waste contains the same valuable elements that face rising demand.

Over the years, several notable methods have been suggested for recovering spent or waste-based rare-earth elements, such as urban mining or nano-filtration systems in streams. One persistent idea is to use microorganisms such as bacteria to “bioabsorb” the desired substances—a passive biological process in which the organisms bind and remove the substances from an aqueous solution. The technology hasn't yet been rolled out at an industrial level, but some researchers suggest that their most recent findings represent a big step forward.

In a recent paper , Thomas Brück, a professor at the Technical University of Munich who studies synthetic biotechnology and sustainability, and his colleagues describe identifying 12 exotic cyanobacterial species that are particularly good at absorbing rare-earth elements. These species could be used to reclaim desirable elements, while also cleaning up the land and the water. “[I]t's not something we predicted in any way,” Brück told Ars.

Enlarge / A safety seminar on lithium-ion batteries from May 2022 illustrates what happens when you subject charged batteries to pressure or puncture—or both. (credit: Getty Images)

A firm that handles returned Amazon electronics has agreed to pay a $25,000 fine after lithium-ion batteries it threw away caused at least three different garbage truck fires.

iDiskk, LLC, based in San Jose, California, agreed to a settlement with the district attorney of Santa Clara County in late November over civil charges regarding improper waste disposal, as noted by E-Scrap News . The company, according to the district attorney's office , "dismantles, recycles, and disposes of consumer computer electronics that are returned through Amazon, some of which contain lithium-ion batteries."

On three different dates in 2021—September 22, October 6, and October 13—trucks picked up residential waste from iDiskk's office address in Campbell, California. A Google Street View look at the address shows a home with a driveway and garage on a tree-lined street. Dozens of lithium-ion batteries were included with typical recycling materials, allowing them to be crushed and compressed with other waste. "In each case, the ... garbage truck driver ejected the truck's load," the initial complaint reads, and the cause was found to be batteries.

Enlarge / This ThinkCentre M90n-1 Nano from 2019 , passively cooled with a big heatsink, was $145 when the author last looked on eBay. It's not a Raspberry Pi, and it looks like Batman's reception desk system, but it can do the work. (credit: Andrew Cunningham )

"Raspberry Pi boards are hard to get, probably also next year," says Andreas Spiess , single-board enthusiast and YouTuber, in his distinctive Swiss accent. He's not wrong . Spiess says he and his fellow Pi devotees need "a strategy to survive" without new boards, so he suggests looking in one of the least captivating, most overlooked areas of computing: used, corporate-minded thin client PCs.

Spiess' Pi replacements, suggested and refined by many of his YouTube commenters and Patreon subscribers, are Fujitsu Futros, Lenovo ThinkCentres, and other small systems (some or all of which could be semantically considered "thick clients" or simply "mini PCs," depending on your tastes and retro-grouch sensibilities). They're the kind of systems you can easily find used on eBay, refurbished on Amazon Renewed, or through other enterprise and IT asset disposition sources. They're typically in good shape, given their use and environment. And compared to single-board enthusiast systems, many more are being made and replaced each year.

They've always been there, of course, but it makes more sense to take another look at them now. "Back to the future," as Spiess puts it (in an analogy we're not entirely sure works).