Comments on: Wal-Mart places new focus on sustainable electronics

"Scorecard" to be introduced in 2008 assesses the environmental friendliness of gadgets sold in Wal-Mart stores.

[lingsun]

The usual liberal environmental crap.

Boy, you can sure tell Wal-Mart is under a lot of political pressure. Sustainable electronics is a joke. It makes as much sense as trying to make biodegradeable TVs.

[Mergatroid Mania]

It makes a ton of sense.

You don't have to make them Bio Degradeable, just repairable.

This would require actually shipping enough spare parts to North America to sustain repairs over an increasingly long life cycle, actually training the technicians on your products, and providing service materials (such as service manuals and hardware), and perhaps making the units themselves more modular and upgradable.

Money can be made from selling parts for out-of-warranty repairs, just as the automotive industry does. However, this will never happen as long as we allow companies to dump electronics goods in our countries at such low prices.

Electronnic goods need to have a longer life cycle, especially at the low end of the price scale.

[cougar12]

I agree, put on a show for consumers

Why not address other environmental issues as well. They sure sell allot of motor oil. No local Walmart I know of takes in used oil to recycle.

[Mergatroid Mania]

This is a good start

I work in an electronics repair shop.

I see or hear of tons of electronics either being thrown in the land fills or being sent "for recycling".

A big part of the problem is that electronics have gotten so cheap. We see people throwing away ink and laser multifunction units and printers all the time.

We need some kind of laws to force the prices up on these devices (and other electronic products) to make them worth repairing.

Every day I hear the old refrain "cheaper to buy a new one".

It's understandable that as devices evolve people would want to update, but as device technology matures and is not very upgradable any more, they should be made to last and be repaired.

New tech toys are usually expensive, and the price declines as the technology ages, but it should never go down so low as to not be worth repairing.

Part of the problem is all the no name brand devices that are dumped into North America at rock bottom prices. None of those companies have the R&D costs, or the costs of maintaining service facilities and actually (God forbid) employing people in our countries. These slash throat companies are a big part of the problem, and force the name brand companies to lower prices unreasonably. Lets be real. I can buy a new colour inkjet printer for about $50 CDN. You know that's a pretty ridiculous price, and I've had people tell me when they're buying them that when the ink runs out, they will throw the printer away and buy another one. There is no way this is good for anyone. If the companies raised the price of their printers enough to actually make a decent profit, maybe we could buy those $30 ink cartridges for the $5 they're actually worth.
As a comsumer, I like low prices too, but enough is enough.