Comment by baybal2
6 years ago
Apple pays Chinese "recyclers" for not to refurbishing their I-stuff, and sending it to a crusher. That's not a big secret in the industry.
A lot of luxury goods brands destroy their unsold merchandise, and some even go Apple style after their second hand market too.
This should be illegal. Increasing profits by artificially increasing scarcity — by polluting the environment with usable products and parts — is not an acceptable business strategy.
I don't really understand why Enron traders got convicted for energy market manipulation, while tech company executives intentionally scrapping usable parts and products get to live in luxury in silicon valley.
The German government is trying to make this practice illegal for vendors. Sadly, not for manufacturers IIRC.
Patagonia gets this right: https://wornwear.patagonia.com/
They encourage you to stick your used goods in the mail and take a store credit for them. They either clean and resell them, cut them up and repurpose them, or they out and out recycle them.
"A lot of luxury goods brands destroy their unsold merchandise"
This also happens since probably forever with fruit and vegetables if they're unsold or in overproduction. The reason is to keep prices fixed by artificially reducing the offer.
Fruit and vegetables and other perishable goods will effectively self-destruct if unsold anyway, so I don't see that as being quite as bad as deliberate destruction of product that would otherwise last indefinitely.
If what I remember about the Great Depression from my history lessons is correct, the picture becomes quite different when you have farmers and vendors destroying food to keep the price up next to masses of people starving because they can't afford the food.
1 reply →
And if one's looking for the reason why so many people complain about the market economy, that's one reason. This is all economically sound, but beyond that, utterly fucked up.
Source?
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/yp73jw/apple-recycling-ip...
I myself worked in refurbishment in the very beginning of my career. Even back in 2012 they were already quite militant with the refurbishing industry.
They blackmailed Alibaba into removing refurbished Apple goods from their store under a threat of pulling their goods from Tmall, and suing them in the US.
Iphone 4 started manufacturing using a non-sticky optical bonding gel for the glass, but later they switched to a hard epoxy out of a sudden in the middle of manufacturing run.
People noted that this was a very expensive solvent resistant epoxy that was very hard. They intentionally made it impossible to unbond the display without ruining it.