Budget Chromebooks Create ‘Piles of Electronic Waste,’ Study Says

Customizable and affordable, Chromebooks exploded in popularity during the COVID-19 pandemic as students were forced to learn remotely. But these budget laptops, often purchased en masse, are beginning to fail, creating “piles of electronic waste,” according to the US PIRG Education Fund.

While schools have long relied on portable computers and tablets to provide individual access to digital learning, the pandemic was a boon for Chromebook makers: Sales rose 87% from 2019 to 2020—helped along by government funding and, in some cases, teachers' own paychecks, the Public Interest Research Group (PIRG) reports(Opens in a new window).

Three years—and more than 31 million Chromebook sales—later, schools are beginning to see their electronic fleets fail, and manufacturers often don't sell the required parts to replace them, or fail to provide support for repairs.

PIRG, for instance, found that nearly half of Acer's replacement keyboards were out of stock online (with 28-plus-day backlogs); of the 29 panels the group reviewed, 10 cost $90 or more, which amounts to nearly half the cost of a typical $200 Chromebook.

The devices also come with built-in “death dates,” as the report notes, after which Google no longer provides updates for Chrome OS, leaving devices vulnerable to viruses and attacks. (Google says it provides “automatic updates for up to eight years,” up from five in 2016.)

“Chromebooks aren't built to last,” Elizabeth Chamberlain, iFixit's director of sustainability, said in a statement published by PIRG. “Professional repair techs tell me they're often forced to chuck good Chromebook hardware with years of life left due to aggressive software expiration dates. Let's stop wasting money and our planet's resources on premature upgrades.”

PIRG's paper, dubbed “Chromebook Churn,” says that doubling the life of only those Chromebooks sold in 2020 could help cut emissions equivalent to taking 900,000 cars off the road for one year. The report also suggests that simply doubling the lifespan of these laptops for all K-12 students in the US could save taxpayers $1.8 billion (assuming no additional maintenance costs).

“We can't afford to stay on the disposability treadmill,” says Lucas Rockett Gutterman, study author and director of the US PIRG Education Fund's “Designed to Last” campaign. “For the sake of Americans' wallets and America's environment, all tech devices should last longer. Google can lead the way by slowing down the ‘Chromebook churn.'”

Moving forward, PIRG says, manufacturers should design Chromebooks to last “by improving device durability, repairability, and sustainability.”

In a statement, Google notes that it provides eight years of automatic updates, and says it's “always working with our device manufacturing partners to increasingly build devices across segments with post-consumer recycled and certified materials that are more repairable, and over time use manufacturing processes that reduce emissions.

“Regular Chromebook software updates add new features and improve device security every four weeks, allowing us to continuously iterate on the software experience while ensuring that older devices continue to function in a secure and reliable manner until their hardware limitations make it extremely difficult to provide updates,” Google adds.

Chromebook owners can recycle their laptops through Google's recycling program(Opens in a new window), and the company said in September(Opens in a new window) that its latest Chromebooks are “made with recycled materials and are easy to customize, repair and upgrade.” But the PCs it highlights are pricier models, including the $1,000 Framework Laptop Chromebook Edition and $1,149 HP Elite Dragonfly Chromebook.

Editors' Note: This story was updated with comment from Google.

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