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> And regular AirPods are definitely a throw-away product…

Please don't — they're recyclable[1]. Recyclers wouldn't normally make money from recovering recyclable materials, but Apple pays[2] to make up the difference.

[1] https://www.apple.com/shop/trade-in

[2] https://onezero.medium.com/what-really-happens-to-airpods-wh...

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Recycling was a lie to sell more plastic, recycling industry veteran says

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24714880

Yeah the plastic isn't recyclable, but e-waste is full of precious metals and structural metals like aluminum that can easily be recycled.

To be fair, I wouldn't be surprised if there's less things if value in an airpod than it's worth. At the point where recycling in and of itself might be more polluting than mining the 0.02g of precious metals and the gram or two of other metals. The structure in airpods is mostly plastic and glue.

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