[an_opabinia]

I own AirPods, I like them, but it sucks that they die when their battery dies, and they have to be thrown away for pretty much no good reason - just because that's how Apple designed it, and it could have many design priorities, and one of those priorities is to not throw nice shit away after two years.

In the spirit of advancing curiosity, it was interesting to just see, is it possible to reduce environmentalism to something like "joy * time / embodied energy"? Bitcoin is mined because a bitcoin is worth more than the electricity used to mine it, so if your joy * time is "making money quickly" - which it is for a lot of people! - it seems really attractive to mine bitcoin but it isn't environmentally friendly.

[alisonkisk]

The point is that the environmental focus on airpods is irrational. look at everything in your trash can this week.

If you are upset that they are too expensive, don't buy them. The price isn't going to waste; it has an enormous profit margin over the BoM. (a lot, perhaps most, of the true cost is fixed overhead, so buying more airpods makes them more efficient!)

[kllrnohj]

> look at everything in your trash can this week.

My trash can almost never has electronic waste in it? It seems really odd that you're seemingly claiming that it's common for people to regularly throw away ewaste to such a degree that airpods are a rounding error.

There's more to airpods than plastic after all.

[an_opabinia]

> look at everything in your trash can this week.

You’re just saying, “if it’s small it’s okay” again. It’s not that reductive. I agree that plastic is bad. I also think throwing away AirPods is bad, for a different reason than plastic is bad, but really, are they the same reason? It’s so much more interesting when it’s not as reductive as “small things are okay to throw away” or whatever like, really simplistic thought is going on here.