[sdiy] Future SYNTH-DIY

[Rainer Buchty]

> I thought the issue was landfill?

Yes, I know. But that reason is plain bullshit to me.

(1) Here, it is not allowed to dump electronics into the normal 
household dumpster. You might not even put it in the recycling bin. 
Instead, you bring it to the nearest recycling center. 

If *they* put it in a landfill, sorry, but then there's something really 
wrong here.

(2) Even *if* you put it in the recycling bin -- if the recycling 
company puts it in a landfill, then there's also something really wrong 
here.

(3) And if it's put into the waste bucket, it usually gets burned. We 
just don't have the space for landfills... In that case the fumes get 
filtered and the ashes stored away.

In any case, I just don't see the scenario happening, that electronic 
waste ends up in landfills. 20 years ago, maybe. But we've been severely 
eco-brainwashed (in Germany) so that even I feel really bad if I have to 
throw something into the wastebucket and *not* the biowaste/compost, 
glass, metal, paper, or plastics recycling bins.

> A lot of electronics end up in landfill

Sorry to say, but that is then a problem of proper waste disposal. There 
is more to waste disposal than just collecting and burying it somewhere 
in the woods.

There are fully automatic machines *for years* which just take *any* 
sort of ordinary household waste and pick out the recycleable material. 
Hardly any human control required...

If they want to ensure that the vendors (well, make that "the 
customers") are paying, then they should just add a fee (like the "green 
point" we have in Germany which adds 1ct per item and ensures, that the 
stuff gets buried somewhere in France, erm, properly recycled I wanted 
to say...) ... But what they are doing now is just ruining small 
business.

OTOH, it seems to be the very intent of European legislature to wipe out 
small business and clear the market for just big players.

>I think that's what I meant about the death of Synth DIY. This is a 
>major pain for hobbyists, but it's potentially lethal for small-scale 
>companies like Doepfer and Moog and the rest.

Oh, easy thing. Just don't sell to EU anymore... Or only do B2B.

Regarding Doepfer and Moog -- they are already big enough to withstand 
the RoHS impact. But any newcomer will have a truly bad time, I guess.

Rainer