You seem uninformed about multiple EU initiatives, we've been deploying reneables, cleaning up the grid, etc. Our car emissions standards are much stricter than US/China/Russia. Unlike in the US, exporting plastic to the third world is actually illegal. And plastic is a distinct and separate problem to CO2.

Here is an example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gacGuWjqKco&t=579s

You could still argue they are not doing enough, but at least some credit is due.

I'm uninformed about the place were I live? I don't know what I smell every day, going to and back to work? You have quite some nerve ;)

Let me tell you some stories about illegal stuff.

A few days ago you could smell chemicals in the air every morning. In the middle of the city. There was a big scandal and they said UK exported their shit here. European style. Nothing really came off of it.

Money talks.

I do not mean to offend, but if you could be more specific about what is it that you deem wrong, we could have a more fruitful conversation.

Are you sure? I mean, European directives are not always implemented perfectly, but all countries do try to. It may be that your country is doing something, it's just not noticeable, yet. This is long term stuff, results are only apparent years or decades after the laws come into effect.

I live in my country and I know some things about it. Germany allows people to sell old cars in Eastern Europe. My country will take those cars without any limits. This is the Europe that I'm living in.

Crossing the street in the morning is an exercise of how long can you hold your breath.

Most Eastern European countries are actually doing well compared to the big wealthy countries in terms of CO2. (Not necessarily in terms of other air quality stuff.)

https://www.eea.europa.eu/data-and-maps/indicators/greenhous... [see fig 4 about targets for 2020 and actual changes in emissions for 2017 and 2018]

CO2 is fine. The particles from the exhaust are the problem. Did you ever smell an intersection with 20-so diesel cars in it?

Yeah. :/ I can't wait for banning ICE vehicles from cities.

My country also buys used cars off Germany, because people here kind of can't afford brand new ones.

Same thing in Finland. There are new cars here and there but if you take a stroll around a dealership's lot, there are lots of cars shipped from Germany that have been used for a few years.

I think the average age of a registered vehicle here is around 10 years; it's not uncommon at all to see >20yo cars in local traffic and parking lots.

Really depends on their condition when purchased, but 15+ year old cars is pushing it. Not worth buying imo, but I guess as long as they're allowed people will buy them. I think the taxes are higher on really old cars?

There are people who simply can't afford or don't want to put any more than a few thousand eur into a car. The other thing is that you can buy a 10-year-old car that is in good condition, and drive it as long as its lasts.. which can be many many years. (My first car was about 20 years old when I got it for free, and my current car was more than 10 years old when I bought it -- now about 13 years, and still feels almost like brand new to me :P)

Taxes are higher depending on emissions, but it's rarely enough to offset the purchase price. For example, if you buy a stinky 90s car that emits 200gCO2/100km, tax would be around 300 eur/year today. A new car that emits 120g/100km is going to be somewhere around 150 eur.

Also, first cars. The usual advice for new drivers is "get a cheap used car and drive it for a while, instead of dumping (equivalent of) a couple thousand EUR into a newer (used) one, and then crashing it into a gate".

Yeah they need to have stricter emissions tests. To be fair, I've seen plenty of surprisingly old cars in the UK, which literally billowed smoke and were visibly rusted... So it's not only Eastern Europe with these problems.

Personally I prefer used imported cars, as well haha. It's just, if it passes technical inspection and emission tests, why not? An 8 year old VW or Toyota with all the options that's been well kept for 7000 Euros seems better to me than a 16,000 Euro new base model.

For getting around a city, public transport is good enough, though.

Another problem is just the number of cars - many cities have more cars than they can handle. Hopefully more cities will ban diesel cars or all cars in some parts...

Things are changing, slowly.

Most likely a coal problem than cars. At least in Poland and most likely Czech Republic and Slovakia where lignite coal is abundant.

Romania or Bulgaria?

So the logic is that we shouldn't do anything because nothing has been done yet ?

Europe probably has the strictest car emissions laws (so strict manufacturers have to cheat to comply with it), and many of its country banned single use plastic bags, straws, &c.

Maybe on paper they do. In reality you pay 20 Euro as bribe and you can get away with anything.

You should look into VW's scandal and check how much they got fined. Last time I checked it was multiple billions. Something like 10%+ of their annual profit.

The only thing you might get away with is bribing a cop for a speeding ticket in some rural part of an eastern EU country. Anything else will eventually be discovered and you'll be fined accordingly.

I could understand your personal point of view if you live east of Poland though.

I'm not sure what's so bad east of Poland but I'm not there.

However, as I said, with a small bribe you can take out any particle filter here. It's common knowledge.

Besides that, did those VW cars got banned from the streets? No! Does VW pay for my health issues? No! Those money are normal taxes to conduct business in Europe.

> I'm not sure what's so bad east of Poland but I'm not there

It's known for being a bit less strict and a bit more corrupt than the west. At least from what I gathered from my bulgarian, polish and greek friends and from my own experience over there.

Idk where you live but in France we have mandatory vehicle inspections every 2 years and you definitely can't bribe these guys. You'll get fined if you get caught, like everything else. How else would it work, we can't have daily inspections on every single thing that could potentially be made illegal.

I agree with your last point though, but that's the german auto mafia, these guys get away with a lot.

> that's the german auto mafia, these guys get away with a lot

Like the most important industries in most countries of the world, sadly.

We have yearly car inspections ;)

"people are corrupted therefore europe bad"

The laws are nothing if they are not enforced.

I am thinking that extracting metals from mines is also polluting, the big issue with plastic is the fact is contaminating waters, for CO2 emissions the major problem is the burning of oil/petrol and I think construction(creating cement creates a lot of CO2).

About glass, some people say that sicne glass is heavy you will use more fuel to move it around(I have no idea if this is true).

Then maybe they should strive to recycle instead to repair.

They already do: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waste_Electrical_and_Electro...

It's always better to avoid throwing something away by repairing it that trying to recycle it.

It depends, most of the time the issue is a small component from a big system failing. This large companies should not block a competent repairman to diagnose and replace the broken part. I am not asking companies to make Lego phones just don't block people with DRM,copyright and supply chain restrictions.

They block competent repairman? Or they ask money for competent repair?

Apple does not allow the companies that make chips from their laptops to also sell those chips for people that want to repair this laptops. So this repair people need to "illegally" obtain the chips from someone at the factory.

Apple also threatens you with lawyers if you host or share schematics for repairing products. The new repair partner program from Apple is also a joke and created to appear they are trying to fix the problem.

Maybe it's a joke to you. For me it's fine. People pay real money in order to have Apple quality. If all you need is "a computer", go ahead, there's plenty around any corner.

Any merchant of quality products would suffer greatly if everyone is allowed to sell stuff in its name.

There's a big difference between someone saying "I'm a repair shop that is capable of fixing Ford vehicles" and "I'm an official Ford Certified repair shop". Both are allowed to fix your car. The third party shop can order parts to repair your car.

And nobody curses Ford's name when they go to a crappy shop and spend $2 on a new headlight that fails in a week. That's the shop's fault.

Nobody is saying anyone can call their junk an "official apple product". Why would this not be the same as the car scenario? If you don't want to risk issues, don't go to sketchy repair shops.

> Any merchant of quality products would suffer greatly

So what? Apple's interests don't matter, unlike its customers'.

Companies often have the monopoly on repair for their products because they don’t make the parts and diagnostic tools available. Yes, they ask money for repair, but there also plenty of repairs they flat out refuse to do. Apple refuses to repair phones with water damage for example. Repairs that repair shops might be happy to do, if they had the access to parts.

How do you repair water damage? Look at the colour of the motherboard and declare it's fine?

Besides that, most Apple phones since 2016 or so are water resistant.

Scrape off rust, replace chips that have been shorted.

Does depend on chips being available and some knowledge on how to diagnose the damages (e.g.: board schematics).

Here's an example of new age Macbook pro's dying from little water ingress (design oversight). And a combination of knowledge and a simple chip can fix your nearly write off Macbook. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jahtu1_idVU

Manual work like that should be more expensive than buying new.

I would be very surprised if Rossman charged more for that repair than the cost of a new Macbook.

Apple loves to say that their products are so expensive and complicated that manual repairs just aren't worth doing. But observably, in the real world, even with all of the crap Apple puts in front of repair shops to slow them down, that isn't true. Third-party repairpeople still manage to regularly beat Apple's prices.

"should be"? I can see how it's more expensive now. But I think that as a collective having things repaired is preferred.

For most manufactures the incentives now is to minimize repairability. Increasing the repair cost.

Having some regulation in place to limit repairability prevention may tip the scale a bit towards repairing.

Reduce, re-use, recycle, IN THAT ORDER.

Car parts are being made in plastic for safety reasons

And it's completely renewable