Comment by formerly_proven

Lots of precedent for that: In the EU WEEE has incentivized companies to crush working electronics rather than selling them, because it is way less bureaucracy to hand something to a certified recycler than it is to legally sell the stuff. And once something has been entered into the WEEE system as waste it's pretty much impossible to legally recover it: the recyclers are literally not allowed to simply pick working equipment out of the pile and sell it. Technically WEEE is supposed to enable reuse, but it's way easier and less bureaucracy to just crush stuff. The necessary per-item paperwork, testing and certification (it has to actually work, broken/non-working equipment cannot be removed from the WEEE system, because it is waste, legally) and logistics required for reuse exceed the residual value anyway.

That's why used enterprise/industrial electronics are way less common on EU eBay compared to other places, despite the industrial base being so large (or used to being so large). You can actually see when WEEE came into force because very little used T&M equipment entered circulation in the EU after the early 2000s.

Another factor is lease agreements, where companies don't buy equipment and the lessor "recycles" (i.e. crushes) the equipment to avoid creating a used/second hand market as an additional benefit.