[jiggawatts]

My favourite example is the complaints about “e-waste” because AirPod batteries are not replaceable. Never mind that the batteries make up about half of the weight of the things ro begin with, the entire annual production of AirPods and their cases would barely fill a single shipping container.

No, not a container ship, or anything substantial like that, just one container (1).

Yet, it makes people lose their rational minds and start foaming at the mouth about Apple’s “wasteful practices”.

[jcheng]

Do you have a citation for that factoid?

[jiggawatts]

Apologies, looks like I mis-remembered the numbers from the original debate, the actual number is about 110x 40-foot containers. It can be calculated easily enough from the # shipped, the volume of a charging case, and the volume of a shipping container.

It doesn’t alter the conclusion that much: in the grand scheme of human industrial activity, this is nothing.

I.e.: if AirPods were made by an independent company, that firm would be in the top 50 of the largest corporations in the world!

For example, a comparable sized company would be Coca Cola, which goes through 300,000 tons of aluminium annually for their cans, not to mention oil used for plastic bottles!

[jcheng]

Sure, I’m with you on your larger point.