[londons_explore]

> I assume Apple and other companies sell the used products to liquidators who refurbish and resell them. Is that not true?

For high brand value goods, generally no. Goods are crushed to become unserviceable. It's important to do that to maintain brand image, otherwise floods of not-very-old iPhones end up on ebay for $10, and the image of an iPhone as something that lasts and has resale value is shattered.

High end clothing manufacturers will even destroy brand new, never worn clothes to maintain brand image, because they don't want them sitting in the bargain bin looking 'cheap'.

It isn't as bad for the environment as it sounds - the vast majority of the costs in a $1000 iPhone are engineering, IP, licensing, manufacturing, capital and marketing costs. The actual metal and plastic is worth hardly anything, so destroying it isn't a big loss. Even the manufacturing cost is near zero because after launch day of a specific model, the marginal cost to produce one more phone is pretty much zero because production lines are rarely still at capacity.

[rarecoil]

> The actual metal and plastic is worth hardly anything, so destroying it isn't a big loss. Even the manufacturing cost is near zero because after launch day of a specific model, the marginal cost to produce one more phone is pretty much zero because production lines are rarely still at capacity.

A big loss economically, maybe, but in terms of energy/carbon losses, to say it's more efficient to just crush the thing and make a new one seems false. You've pushed from number 1 on the Reuse->Reduce->Recycle->Recover->Landfill to steps 3 and 4, and then created a new iPhone in its place.

Throughout its life, a single iPhone 11 Pro Max is 86 kg CO2e [1]. The XS Max that existed and is crushed to "preserve brand value" is 77 kg CO2e [2] in footprint. Just in manufacturing costs alone, you are creating more CO2e creating the new one than the XS Max did, and taking the XS Max out-of-life early. We are not taking into account you now get to recycle the XS Max or just dump it in landfill.

Destruction of an existing item for "brand value" is not the correct environmental answer.

[1] https://www.apple.com/environment/pdf/products/iphone/iPhone...

[2] https://www.apple.com/environment/pdf/products/iphone/iPhone...

[ClumsyPilot]

I am with you on the ethics side, but he is correct, impact is immaterial, and your numbers confirm it the typical impact of a person, a year, is measured in tons of CO2, 90 kg amounts to like a few days of heating or a festive dinner, or filling up your car tank.

However, if they are not recycled and the materials end up in plastic pollution, heavy metal poisoning, or other damage, that's a whole different story.

[emayljames]

No, I'd say the real elephant in the room is that the vast majority of pollution is caused by industry. Example: the US military is the worlds largest polluter.

[xp84]

Sure, many things do get destroyed for branding reasons.

This is an overgeneralization though to say that's definitely what Apple or someone else normally does with electronics. Plenty of the devices Apple gets back (or significant components from them) do end up on the refurbished channel. And the same goes for all their competitors. Tons of phones are refurbished. Go on eBay or Amazon or Groupon etc and there are hundreds of models available in quantity. These come from phone trade-in programs.

[caf]

Sometimes if you send your device for repair to Apple you get a refurbed unit back instead.

[asveikau]

> It isn't as bad for the environment as it sounds - the vast majority of the costs in a $1000 iPhone are engineering, IP, licensing, manufacturing, capital and marketing costs.

So it seems like you're defining "good for the environment" as "low dollar costs to Apple". This is very strange.

[freewilly1040]

Low end clothing retailers also destroy never worn merchandise if it doesn't sell, but it has more to do with how expensive it is to store / transport