Slow Clap Presents: AirPods

Real Story.  Real Stupid.

AirPods are everywhere and everyone seems to own a pair.  How many people who own AirPods stopped to consider two important questions before their purchase?  Where did they come from and where will they go?

AirPods are made plastic, of course, but also of earth elements tungsten, tin, tantalum, lithium, and cobalt.  People mine and extract these elements from places like Vietnam, South Africa, Kazakhstan, Peru, Mexico, Indonesia, and India.  The people who do this work are paid poorly and they are not usually treated well.  Mining like this is dangerous and difficult work.  These elements are shipped to China where more underpaid and overworked people assemble them into a workable product.  Apple used to source Cobalt and Titanium from the Democratic Republic of the Congo but changed its practice after news of child labor, worker injury, and worker death began to leak.

Once the AirPods are assembled and shipped to the United States they are sold to you.  The AirPods are averaging about 18 months of use before the lithium-ion battery begins to stop holding a charge.  The design of the AirPod makes it nearly impossible to open and change the battery.  So what can you do with them once they no longer hold a charge and are unusable?

Since the design makes opening the AirPods so difficult they cannot be taken apart and recycled.  The lithium-ion battery is not able to go into the trash because of the risk of fire in a trash compactor.  So you can't recycle them, you can't throw them away, and Apple isn't going to take them back.  The answer is that you are stuck with your non-functioning AirPods and the planet is stuck with them long after you are dead.  That's right, they will never decompose and are a hazard to throw away.

My two cents:  I don't own AirPods but I do own a pair of Pixel buds that I bought before I knew about this problem.  I wish I had taken the time to educate myself about where these materials come from and where they will go before I made the purchase.

Rating:  I give AirPods 2 out of 5 possible slow claps for being unethically sourced and because they are an e-waste nightmare that is only beginning to be realized.