Comment by Aaargh20318
6 years ago
> 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.