Hi, This is not meant to be a philosophical debate.
In the interest of consistency and to ensure the fixometer algorithms run correctly, I would like to seek clarification on the terms Powered and Unpowered. Clearly it seems relatively self-evident that an item connected to the Electric Mains is powered.
However:-
- Is a petrol driven strimmer powered in the context of Fixometer?
- Is a battery driven toy powered?
- Is a clock work item driven by a coiled spring or a weight falling due to gravity, powered?
- Is a bicycle driven by human energy, powered?
Maybe some help or clarification may help.
Jon
Hi Jon and thanks for this really good question! All of the categories are subject to a lot of personal interpretation. Here is my take on it.
The Fixometer’s emission calculations are based on information about e-waste which is why stats are only produced for “powered” items. Therefore, imo, “powered” includes anything with electrical/electronic components. However, identifying an item that is an e-waste candidate can be complicated.
- A petrol driven strimmer would be technically “powered” if it contained a battery-powered starter motor. Otherwise I’d say “unpowered”.
- A battery driven toy, and anything that uses batteries, is “powered”.
- A clock work item would be “unpowered” if it contained absolutely no electronic components.
- A bicycle driven by human energy alone, without any sort of battery or motor, falls into the “unpowered” category. However, a bicycle light is “powered”.
Other devices that confuse the issue include…
- Wind-up torches and radios, although powered by human action the energy is converted by electronic components.
- Solar powered devices, e.g. garden lamps, also contain electronic components such as diodes, batteries and circuits.
- Textiles and clothing with electronic components, e.g. trainers with LED lights are “powered”.
- Analogue cameras often contained button batteries and therefore would be technically “powered”, although they are quite useable without the battery because it only powered the light-meter (iirc) and would still take photographs.
- A toy that makes a noise might be battery powered or it might just have some sort of analogue squeaky thing inside it.
I am right in the middle of mapping nearly 300k records to compile a new ORDS dataset and for the first time we are looking at analysing “unpowered” items. It’s a minefield! I totally respect how hard it is to classify a device not only into “powered” or “unpowered” but then decide which one of the other categories it fits into. No wonder so many people just opt for “None of the above”!
Don’t get me started on the multi-functional devices that could go in multiple categories. 
e.g. I see items such as “radio/alarm/CD player” end up in any of “portable radio”, “watch/clock”, “handheld entertainment device”, “hi-fi separates” or “hi-fi integrated” - they could almost have their own category. I’ve also seen “electric blanket” in “unpowered - textile” because the repair did not involve the electrical components, rather the frayed hem just required stitching - totally reasonable choice if not technically ideal for the purposes of calculating e-waste.
In my spare time I delve into ways of mapping our data to other categories and have tinkered with various ideas of classifying and tagging records.
As for rewriting the list of (legacy) categories, it would be a major task that would impact a lot of people who collect and input the data, and there simply is not enough resources to undertake it.
In the end, the main thing is stuff gets fixed and, kept out of landfill for now. Our statistics will never be perfect but that’s OK, they are good enough. 
ps. Apologies for my rambling train-of-thought essay, but I my mind is very much focused on this issue right now. 
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