[derefr]

Those things are negative externalities. In this case, apartment buildings are receiving e.g. a carton of free new laptops that they could sell or donate. Yes, in some sense it's "littering", but it's not littering of valueless trash that costs more than it's worth to dispose of. It costs Amazon more than it's worth, but to pretty much any regular human being, it's like Amazon "littered" a stack of $20 bills in their apartment lobby.

And, because this stuff has value, it will very likely all get reused (i.e. resold or donated into the secondary market), not thrown away. Which will satisfy some of the demand for the products Amazon is selling, replacing an order someone would have made for a new product. Which means this act doesn't even have any externalities for the environment—nothing is going to landfill that otherwise wouldn't.

So I honestly don't get your comparison.