Comment by crazygringo
6 years ago
It seems like a lot of commenters here (as well as the tweets) are totally missing the purpose of the recycle mode.
If you want to sell, give away, or otherwise let someone else reuse your Sonos, then DON'T PUT IT IN RECYCLE MODE. Easy peasy.
Recycle mode exists for when you intentionally want to get a Sonos trade-in credit for recycling your speakers for materials. But because you don't send the speakers directly to Sonos (instead to a local recycler), they have to trust you're actually recycling it instead of keeping it or selling it. So the recycle lock is a clever mechanism to ensure that. Otherwise you could "cheat" by getting the credit AND still using/selling your speakers.
So if you want your speakers to be reused... don't take the credit!! Donate or sell them instead! It's your choice.
It seems to me like overall it's a good set of incentives. The credit helps encourage people to recycle them at all instead of just throwing them in the trash, right? But doesn't prevent people from otherwise selling or donating them. Since it gives the consumer all the choice, this seems like a win for all sides, no?
People understand the purpose of it quite well. They just completely disagree with your analysis.
First, the most environmental form of recycling is for an object to be reused as is. So, if any item is given to a recycling center, if the recycling center can just sell it directly to someone else, then it's much more environmentally friendly.
Second, the credit doesn't encourage people to recycle them at all instead of throwing it in the trash, there's no verification that they've given it to a recycling center. The only thing is that after the recycling mode is enable, the device becomes a useless paperweight.
So it's an extremely environmentally unfriendly policy from a company who pretends they care about the environment.
> So, if any item is given to a recycling center, if the recycling center can just sell it directly to someone else, then it's much more environmentally friendly.
I think OP's analysis did cover that. You don't have to put it in the recycle mode. You can sell it yourself or choose not to get the credit so someone else can "Recycle" it by reusing it.
I do agree with you that people could still put in the trash, but I also think that's where good recycling programs matter. It shouldn't be hard to recycle an electronic. It should be as simple as recycling paper or glass, especially in an age where almost everything is electronic.
If they really want to encourage reuse of their devices, why would they incentivize the users to turn their devices into unusable trash by giving them credits for doing that?
> but I also think that's where good recycling programs matter.
However good your recycling program is, it is still going to be _strictly more_ wasteful than simply reusing the device.
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Recycling electronics is extremely difficult and non-trivial. See the Netflix series “broken” -> plastics for a deep-dive. If the company claims it’s super environmentally friendly, it should incentivize reuse of existing products. Instead it’s saying, “want a discount to spend more money with us? Great. Let’s get you a discount by creating an extremely difficult and mostly unrecyclable paperweight out of what you have, first.” They could have said “refer a friend and we’ll give you a discount” etc
There's a very nice graphic in the Twitter thread showing "reduce > re-use > recycle > trash". They are different things, so let's not make things extra confusing by saying "recycle by reusing".
Anyway, what Sonos is incentivizing through their credit is to make people choose the option "recycle or trash". They have no incentive to make people choose one over the other. And as already mentioned elsewhere in the thread, many recycling centres won't take a completely bricked device, so I think it's pretty fair to say that in practice what Sonos is incentivizing is for people to first brick, then TRASH the device in exchange for these credits.
Either way, Sonos is actively dis-incentivizing the "re-use" option, which is the most environmentally friendly one.
And the only reason they do this is their profit.
The end result of all this is to say Sonos doesn’t give a whit about the environment though. If that was the case they would allow someone at the recycle center to buy their old equipment, and the original owner to buy a new one with a discount (for being a loyal customer, and presumably still making a profit).
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> the most environmental form of recycling is for an object to be reused as is
Just a nit: it’s useful to think of reusing as distinct from recycling. Recycling breaks the object into its raw material.
No, you are totally missing the point of the recycle mode: the recycle mode is there to gain control of the devices after they have been initially sold to ensure that they will not be resold or given away when someone upgrades resulting in countless instances of good gear ending in the landfill or having to be recycled at substantial cost to society by dangling a small advantage in front of the original buyer.
Recycling effectively is the same as throwing them in the trash in this case. There is no need for this. Sonos could just as easily offer an upgrade discount to people who bought their gear originally but they are scared that this would affect their ability to sell to other people so they create what is called artificial scarcity.
And that should not happen with things that are still serviceable, especially not for a company that claims to have sustainability as their motto.
From the thread in that tweet:
"To add insult to injury, there are complaints on Sonos' support forums from people who've managed to accidentally put their devices into recycling mode, and been told by Sonos support that there's no way to stop the countdown, forcing them to buy new devices after 21 days."
and
"From what our eBay guy can tell, the bricking isn't even in hardware; you can't recover it if you're good with JTAG, because it's blacklisted as "recycled" on their servers. There's nothing stopping these things from working except Sonos says they can't."
Madness.
> been told by Sonos support that there's no way to stop the countdown, forcing them to buy new devices after 21 days
> you can't recover it if you're good with JTAG, because it's blacklisted as "recycled" on their servers. There's nothing stopping these things from working except Sonos says they can't.
These two points are not compatible with each other. If the only effect of recycle mode is that the device gets blacklisted on a Sonos server, then Sonos is trivially able to undo the effects.
They're perfectly compatible with each other. Sonos can stop the countdown, but won't.
You should of course be cautious about assuming a cursory look from a 3rd party is enough to know for certain how the device is bricked, but it's not abnormal or weird for a business like Sonos to use a half-baked technical strategy to brick their devices, and then to just stonewall anyone who calls into support.
Half of the time that a company says, "there's no way for us to do X", what they really mean is, "please go away now."
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How can it be that this is the top voted comment, with such a glaring logic flaw?
There is literally no way for them to verify that you didn't just throw your device in the landfill after enabling recycling mode and pocketing the cash. So this "functionality" does no good at all, other than to recruit the customer into their planned obsolescence program while praising the company for their "green" policy.
And it worked like a charm. Just look at how many people upvoted this comment, signifying their praise of the company for this terrible program!
Welcome to marketing in capitalism, in particular greenwashing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenwashing
It's a common marketing stunt and techniques with similar harmful effects were applied to other things as well, e.g., nicotine or prescription drug marketing. Public good is only a secondary objective in the american-style capitalism.
> But because you don't send the speakers directly to Sonos (instead to a local recycler), they have to trust you're actually recycling it instead of keeping it or selling it.
And to be clear, either keeping it or reselling it would be better for the environment than recycling the device. It's completely backwards to design an environmental program around making sure that people don't secretly do the right thing behind your back.
The fact that there are multiple highly-rated comments on HN looking at resellers and saying, "well, obviously they shouldn't get Sonos credits" shows how poor of a job our society is doing educating people about how reduce-reuse-recycle actually works. You don't have to check for people abusing the system. The people abusing the system are the environmental success stories. If a bunch of people participate in the trade-up program and then secretly resell their devices, that is a good thing that should be celebrated.
If anything, Sonos should be offering more credit to those people, not less.
Please stop using word "recycling" in the wrong way. Sonos used this word purposefully to promote the deactivation of their devices, which has nothing to do with real recycling: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/recycle
It's not clear to me from that link what my error is. Would you be willing to expand?
The commonly used definition of recycling I've heard is the first one listed on the linked page: "to process (something, such as liquid body waste, glass, or cans) in order to regain material for human use."
That's why the phrase is "reduce, reuse, recycle", right? Yes, technically you could say reuse is a form of recycling, but we distinguish between reusing something outright, and breaking it down into component parts that can be partially recovered -- because we want to point out that the first option is better than the second.
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In other words "recycle" mode isn't recycling (you can just chuck them in the trash) and it isn't reusing.
A complete deception to sound green, with zero cost to Sonos with zero attempt to be green, and just causing a waste stream. Nice one Sonos.
Sonos will pay for you to ship your recycled speaker back to them to be recycled. Not only do they pay for this shipping and recycle the speaker, but they give you a 30% credit. Hardly zero cost to Sonos, and considering the thriving market for refurbished speakers from Sonos it seems pretty clear the old speakers are being reused. Overall, sounds like they're doing exactly what they say they are.
They don’t accept the old speakers (let alone pay for shipping), they ask you to bring them to a non-affiliated recycling center. They are never reactivated.
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What is the point of recycling mode if you ship the speaker to them? Why wouldn't they just credit you upon receipt of the speaker?
> The credit helps encourage people to recycle them at all instead of just throwing them in the trash, right?
As others have commented, the most environmentally friendly way to ‘recycle’ is to reuse.
The purpose of this recycle mode is not to encourage recycling, but to kill the second hand market.
The recycle credit is 30% off a new Sonos product, which, as far as I can tell, is worth around $100.
The linked tweet says the recycled Sonos would have been worth $250 on the secondhand market if not recycled.
It's extremely doubtful that the recycle credit is intended to prevent a second-hand market, and far more likely accidental. It does seem like a trade-in credit would work better, but nothing prevents third parties from offering a trade-in credit above $100.
After your analysis, I actually think it is to prevent the 2nd hand market... There's no undo (despite it being a flag on their cloud), so no backsies in case the user gets a clue that this mode is actually stupid (they'd call the recycler to ask if they take Sonoses, get a reply of "is it bricked (did you activate recycle mode)? If no, you can get $200 (we'll resell for $250), if yes it's worth 0.").
And it's not even a setting they put in to care about the environment, because they don't give a shit if you actually give the device to a recycler or not. So, my conclusion, it's some fucking douchebag manager's idea.
If they actually cared about the environment they'd take the old devices and use the parts for warranty repairs, and even have a refurb store (but noo, we sell fancy rich people toys, we can't tarnish our store with selling environmentally friendly but other people's discarded gadgets).
I wish Greta Thunberg would tweet about this, their sales would nosedive.
There's no part of me that follows anything you said.
We absolutely understand what the intention of the button is.
I do not understand the actual sane incentive for anybody in this transaction.
How would Sonos be worse off if those machines weren't wasted? You get a sale either way; you reward a loyal customer for an upgrade either way. If it weren't a large company, I'd say they do it out of spite - but in reality, it's just the bizarre, surreal method large corporations end up with ridiculous policies through a set of seemingly logical steps.
>>they have to trust you're actually recycling it instead of keeping it or selling it
Why? What is the benefit to them (Sonos)? What is the harm if you DID keep it?
>>The credit helps encourage people to recycle them at all instead of just throwing them in the trash, right?
There's absolutely positively nothing about this mode / button that prevents people from throwing it in the trash. In fact, by any logic I can see, it does the opposite and encourages them to chuck it in the garbage - since it's now a worthless non-functioning brick.
>>the recycle lock is a clever mechanism to ensure that.
Let us please NOT call this travesty "Clever". At least not outside of SV tech-bro blinders culture :O. It does NOTHING to ensure recycling.
>>Otherwise you could "cheat" by getting the credit AND still using/selling your speakers.
Oh noes! Wait.. HOW would Sonos be at all worse off? How would ANYbody be impacted for the worse?
>>this seems like a win for all sides
Sonos didn't get anything out of it. Recycling company got less out of it. Earth got less out of it. And there's no reason I can understand why consumer has to go through that hoop to get an upgrade credit. Seems like a lose-lose for all sides.
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I'm not going to downvote, because you made a lucid argument and downvotes are for those who do not contribute to conversation, not for disagreements. I'd say your post contributed a lot to conversation, seeing the number of comments:). But I fail to understand the argument you're trying to make and the framework / world outlook where it makes sense. I'm willing to be persuaded otherwise but need a lot more to even begin changing my mind :-/. Just because consumer "have choice", doesn't make one of the options automatically sane.
Of course Sonos wants to remove speakers from the second hand market. That doesn't make it remotely good for anyone else or for the environment.
You are not forced to take the incentive. You can always sell the device on a second hand market and get more money than that incentive.
There is literally no reason you can justify this being good for the environment. It may make business sense but it's still a crime against the planet.
Haven't you noticed that the word "recycle" is used here in the exactly opposite way than it should be? https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/recycle
This is purposeful marketing misinformation. The goal here is to incentivize a naive customer, apparently including you, to make their devices non-reusable and to buy new devices. This has nothing to do with recycling, yet Sonos purposefully uses this word, because in this way they achieve their goal.
This isn't even a new technique. Unfortunately, it's widespread. Yet another example of greenwashing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenwashing
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This is the dumbest thing ever. Sonos never receives the materials so you don't get credit "for recycling your speakers for materials", they somehow give you credits for destroying a piece of hardware so that it cannot be reused.
They literally get nothing, except to make their devices more rare by having old ones bricked. Which is WRONG, in this world of increasing waste.
Your idea that this somehow overall is a good set of incentives seems to be based on two things: One, that people would otherwise just throw them in the trash, which isn't true. Two, that it's somehow a good thing to give customers the choice to brick it for no other reason than Sonos credit.
Disabling perfectly functional equipment for some business reason still seems to contradict the concept of sustainably.
There should not be any opt-out for recycling because everyone foots the cost of a shitty planet to save your $50 credit.
Haven't you noticed that the word "recycle" is used here in the exactly opposite way than it should be? https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/recycle
This is purposeful marketing misinformation. The goal here is to incentivize a naive customer, apparently including you, to make their devices non-reusable and to buy new devices. This has nothing to do with recycling, yet Sonos purposefully uses this word, because in this way they achieve their goal.
This isn't even a new technique. Unfortunately, it's widespread. Yet another example of greenwashing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenwashing
The problem is Sonos is making it easier for people to perform acts that are bad for the environment.
The second hand market is very good for the environment. By going after it, Sonos is actively hurting the environment.
That people have a choice doesn't exonerate Sonos. They are making it a lot easier for people to make the wrong choice.
Many things in this world is a win for both parties involved but still an awful thing to do (due to externalities).
> they have to trust you're actually recycling it instead of keeping it or selling it
Why?