Here's another e-waste crisis for the e-waste crisis pile: 'Chromebook churn'

pcgamer.com:

One of the most essential school supplies for public school students has a sustainability problem. A report from the non-profit consumer advocacy group PIRG(opens in new tab) says that the planned obsolescence of public school-provided Google Chromebooks is costly to taxpayers and the environment. 

The biggest contributor to «Chromebook churn» is that these devices provided for students last, on average, about four years, claims PIRG. As of March 2021, 48.1 million K-12 students have been provided Chromebooks, and remote learning has become more commonplace due to the pandemic. This means a student will go through several Chromebooks throughout their school career.

A couple of factors contribute to the churn; the first and most common is that the Chromebook OS essentially has an expiration date, after which it can no longer receive updates, and school systems are forced to upgrade to newer versions of the device. Many public school systems require fully up-to-date hardware in order to access their online testing services. 

Another factor is that Chromebooks are notoriously hard to repair, and spare parts are hard to come by and often not compatible across different models. Schools are then forced to buy new devices because tossing the broken Chromebook is less of a hassle than fixing it. And since roughly only a third of the entire Chromebook is recyclable, most of it sits as electronic waste.  

Best gaming PC(opens in new tab): The top pre-built machines from the prosBest gaming laptop(opens in new tab): Perfect notebooks for mobile gaming

PIRG does suggest a couple of short-term solutions; the first is extending the life of Chrome OS software to 10 years after the product's launch date. Often perfectly fine Chromebooks