Originally Posted by
earlofsodbury
Watches are rare among consumer durables in having VERY long lifetimes (my oldest example is ~100 years old), being very repairable, and have extremely low energy consumption by their very nature (most of ours on here are us-powered!), and aside from quartz, require next to no consumables. So as a Thing, they are pretty green.
Production of watches - who knows? There's a bit of "greenwash" creeping-in, for sure - re-use is always better than recycling, when possible. Manufacture-wise, Switzerland and Germany have very strict environmental protection laws, and if Switzerland's anything like Germany, both are way ahead of us in renewable energy use; China, the exact opposite is true, and requires much longer supply lines, never mind their appalling attitudes to human-rights &c, so more of a Carbon jackboot-print there, and probably better avoided.