The Camera Industry & The Environment

Brian Atherton

Brian Atherton

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I will keep this as short as possible…

Fuji’s new X-Pro3 with its resource and energy hungry, difficult to manufacture, titanium top and bottom body plates got me thinking.

Judging by their publicity, with the notable exception of recyclable packaging materials and online only manuals, camera manufacturers, compared to, say, mobile phone manufacturers, appear to pay scant regard to the environment - in fact the trend is the opposite (exotic glass formulations, electronic circuits in lenses becoming the norm, batteries, titanium and advanced coatings). A sweeping statement but I trust you get my drift.

I am guessing that the vast majority of photographers - me included - don’t put environmental issues at the top of their list of considerations when choosing a new camera or lens (deliberately I’m taking the used market out of the equation).

So…

Shouldn’t we? Shouldn’t we make this a higher priority?
Am I being hard (and wrong) with my opinion about the camera industry?
If not, shouldn’t we be more demanding and more openly critical of the camera industry and its environmental impact?

Discuss.
 
Brian Atherton said:
Judging by their publicity, with the notable exception of recyclable packaging materials and online only manuals, camera manufacturers, compared to, say, mobile phone manufacturers, appear to pay scant regard to the environment...
Click to expand...

Well, looking beyond the CSR blather for something more concrete, there's this:

https://www.usa.canon.com/internet/portal/us/home/about/environment-sustainability-initiatives/consumer-products-recycling-program

https://eridirect.com/sony/

http://www.panasonic.com/environmental/recycling-electronic.asp
 
To answer your questions in the order you have asked them.........

Shouldn’t we? Shouldn’t we make this a higher priority?
Maybe.
But it all comes down to proportionality. Is real damage being done by using a few grams of titanium per camera? I somehow seriously doubt it. With the power of social media giving voice to every tin pot "activist" in the land, people tend to get carried away with fads. One such fad for example is global climate change where zealots are conflating the fact that climate does change (and some of this is anthropogenic) to argue that we must essentially overturn and destroy the civilizations built over the past 2,000 years or we will "all be dead in the next 10 years." Even while giving a pass to other countries that are doing much more damage objectively - presumably for politically correct reasons. In today's climate where people are constantly having a new moral panic about something that 5 minutes ago no one had ever even heard of or thought of, this stuff happens all the time. A new day - a new panic. And us "chicken littles" (the parable about the sky falling") are expected to just fall into line or be told we are "deniers". Never the less we are told we must take on the new cause (whatever it might be) without any real evidence - just because its the "moral thing to do". Sorry but I am calling B.S. on that!

Am I being hard (and wrong) with my opinion about the camera industry?

My answer is simple. Show me the evidence that camera companies are causing significant environmental problems. If they are I have never heard of it. So - show me the evidence. Don't sit in an ivory tower (not you specifically but us generally) and complain that they are not being 'environmental enough" in the absence of real evidence of real damage. It is not enough to be ideological or doctrinaire and argue that they "should be" better just....... "because". And it is not good enough to go looking for a fight with them just because this is a hobby horse that you buy into and you therefore think everyone else should too.

If not, shouldn’t we be more demanding and more openly critical of the camera industry and its environmental impact?

In the absence of that evidence I say we should not be. We live in a free world (theoretically though thanks to cranks and activists it's becoming less free by the second) and in a free world people and firms should be able to do their business without busybodies telling them how to do it and what to do absent any evidence of damage. In Australia we have the Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act which I happen to know something about. It is predicated on the idea that firms should be free to carry out their business unless evidence can be shown of significant environmental damage that cannot be ameliorated or compensated for. In other words firms should not be constantly hectored about not being 'woke" enough environmentally though they might be stopped doing something specific that does cause significant environmental damage as the Act defines it.
 
I'm not into this stuff, but aren't lithium batteries (processing, mining, shipping, and disposal) the worst for the environment? A camera battery is nothing compared to a Tesla battery.

We have been plagued with wild fires here in California for a couple of years (you all know the reasons; poor management) but many lithium battery cars have been victims of the fires, and yet no concern about proper disposal.
 
Try researching "life cycle assessment" to learn more about the impacts of photographic product production. I found an article on digital vs. film that finds that there are tradeoffs but neither is obviously safer:

https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/bc42/71d5f37c0cfe1fb8dd0e0c548c9fd7f5c9f7.pdf
"Life Cycle Assessment of Film and Digital Imaging Product System Scenarios International Conference on Life Cycle Engineering"
Bert Bras, Jay Mathewson, Michael C. Muir

Here's Canon's LCA: https://global.canon/en/environment/lca/index.html

One of the sad things about PR material or advertising that gives you a "factory tour" is that all of the people wearing "protective" garments are usually not very well protected from toxic chemicals. The thing being protected is the part being manufactured.
 
I hope that camera/lens/equipment manufacturers minimize the pollution that they create.
I also hope that photographers using film are doing something with the chemical waste their activity generates beside dumping it into the public waste stream. Where I live, what you dump into the household drain and toilet ends up in the Pacific Ocean.
 
Until proven otherwise, I'll assume that camera makers are as bad as any industry. Yes, we should pressure them to do better, but there's little leverage because in choosing such specialized tools, other criteria will always be more important to selecting one. Photography isn't where I'd start worrying about my environmental impact. Very few of us buy cameras by the dozen anyway, so there are other parts of our lives where changes have greater impact.
 
As far as I know, titanium is one of the better metals to make things out of in terms of re-usability and toxicity.

Plastics would have to be one of the worst.
 
Excuse me, but with cameras, lenses I’m highest environmentalist.
I’m using cameras, lenses for decades. Same cameras and lenses.
Leica is most environmentally friendly manufacturer I ever know. They support cameras made in fifties.
I also use second hand cameras, not buying every new Fuji just because it is new Fuji.
 
Well done Ko.Fe. you deserve a medal. This said, during the heyday of film photography -at a time when environmental issues were not on the agenda, the dumping of massive amounts of chemicals must have been a real problem.
 
Ko.Fe. said:
Leica is most environmentally friendly manufacturer I ever know. They support cameras made in fifties.
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I'd only believe that if they didn't currently have a full line of modern digitals, of all sizes and shapes for all kinds of shooters.
 
Your reference to Leica's environmental durable history remains flawed. Film based photography had massive amounts of harmful chemicals dumped into our eco-systems.
 
The camera industry is hardly even an industry at this point, barely even breathing. It and photographers have already suffered enough from regulations eliminating actual “exotic glass” formulations.
The world has legitimate environmental concerns, Fuji using titanium instead of magnesium for top plates cannot possibly be considered to be one of them. Wild eyed activists making a nuisance of themselves at camera manufacturer shareholder meetings, bringing “pressure” with ill considered ideas about how to make better cameras cannot possibly “make the world a better place”.

Resource depletion and pollution, and possibly CO2 generation, are real problems. They won’t be solved, or materially affected in any way by nibbling around the edges. Instead of wasting time hassling irrelevant industries, spend it hassling those concerns at the top of the bad actor list, which in this case means China. Like the protesters in Hong Kong, the Uighers, and the Falun Gong are doing. And how’s that working out? The rest of us, safe at home, fretting about Fuji top plates, are doing nothing but virtue signaling. It’s not helpful to the environment or anything else. Understanding that would be one of the first things necessary if we really wanted to “help”. That’s harder, yes, but going after low hanging and irrelevant fruit like the camera industry does nothing which will materially help “the world” in any measurable, material way.
 
There was an interesting discussion of "Film vs digital myths" written by Ron Mowrey on p.net and one interesting insight was that digital does have quite a sizeable footprint in the manufacturing as well. Particularly noted was the circuit doping processes and such, not only waste management concerns. Film got a lot of attention due the chemical usage but IIRC the latter days of Kodak it was much more strictly cared for.

Can't find the direct article, since photo.net has changed so much.

Personally my current roster of cameras is all used, an EPL2 I did buy new but is still kicking since 2012 and an EM5 that I bought used in great condition but may have its 6-7 years. The advantage of having reached that point of sufficiency is that the turnaround/upgrading cycle slows down a lot.

I do notice with film the amount of packaging and transportation involved, although cameras have very long lifespans and I do actually like the "obsolete VCR like" prosumer AF SLRs which go for a song nowadays. Sadly the consumer cameras such as most auto P&S aren't resilient and easily become waste when unrepairable.

Our camera club found out a government agency cleaning out their darkroom and we got quite many meters of decade old but very usable Ilford paper that now everyone can use. Likewise every once in a while some old equipment is found, and put to better hands if possible. Sad to see that being wasted.

I've been academically in the area of sustainability for part of this year and it is quite an interesting field.
 
Actually it is "we". The actions of a few well meaning individuals will do nothing. Humans have to learn that EVERYTHING is connected. This does not come easily to us. Affluent civilization is very good at "away"- meaning the actual cost of things is not apparent in the price, or in the local surroundings, or even on a human time scale. Makes it very difficult to understand the implications of things. Flush your toilet it goes away, the ramifications of cheap goods are away, and so on. Picking and choosing where work needs to be done is a red herring.
 
JeffS7444 said:
Who's "We"?

Change starts with you, OP: How will you change your own behavior?
Click to expand...

The collective ‘we’. Shorthand for us; you, me, our photographic community, photographers as consumers of photographic products.

Since you ask, and it’s a valid question, my behaviour with respect to the demands I make on the environment has changed or has been modified over the last seven years or so to consciously make less of an impact as I’ve become more educated and informed, eg I now eat less meat, I source longer lasting clothing from ethical companies, I walk and use public transport more, my home has been insulted to a high level etc and my energy usage has been cut by nearly half what it was five years ago, I have never owned a diesel car. On the negative side I love travel, so fly more than average.

Specifically in the photographic field, my principal hobby, my Leica and Rollei film equipment has all been purchased secondhand; films are processed and scanned, and printed out to a small degree on a jet printer. In the past they would have been wet-printed. For over thirty years I worked in a commercial black and white advertising darkroom and now shudder to think about the thousands of gallons of toxic chemicals quite legally put down the drain.

My X-Pro2 and lenses were purchased new but I am thinking seriously of not buying the new X-Pro3 body as in truth, the X-Pro2 is more than adequate for my needs. My heavily worked X-Pro2 might last another year or two, might not. When it comes to replacing it I may look in the secondhand market, rather than new. It’s a pleasant dilemma to have.

Thank you to everyone who is contributing to this thread; your views and thoughts are much appreciated and give me pause for thought.
 
Look at cameras relative to cell phones. 1.4 Billion cell phones made a year. What, 5,000 Fujis will be made? It's like worrying about someone who tossed a cigarette butt on the ground beside a land fill or a the fumes off a can of developer compared to 356,000,000,000 cars in the world spewing exhaust. Proportionality.

You want to worry about a 4" piece of titanium, and 1 gram of electronics in a lens?! Bwahahahah! Knock yourself out.
 
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