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Not the person you responded to, but I would totally be onboard taxing companies in a way that more accurately reflects their environmental impact. As it stands products are artificially cheap because we're not factoring in environmental sustainability.


Wireless earbuds are going to be filling landfills soon. They have become near unrepairable as of late and once the batteries inside barely last 15 min, people will just trash them and get new ones. At least wired headphones could be used for decades without issue.


How much use out of something is enough?

AirPods weigh 10.4 grams for the pair. Let's say two hours per charge, and 400 charges, before they're no good.

That's 1.3 milligrams of e-waste per hour. After 77 hours you have one aspirin pill's worth of e-waste on your conscience.

Filling a landfill? With the case, I get about 1.5 million per shipping container. How big are landfills where you live?


Don't you think comparing something degradable like aspirin to plastic and lithium batteries is a false equivalence?


Fair, let's compare like for like.

A pair of AirPods weighs the same as two ordinary plastic bags, the grocery store kind.

Lithium? About a gram of lithium in a disposable AA lithium battery. About 0.015 grams per AirPod proper, and another 0.16 grams in the case. So call it 0.2 grams, or when you toss five (5) AirPods with their cases, that's as much lithium as one (1) disposable AA battery.




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