Since December 15, a public repair bonus slightly reduces the cost of repairing certain electronic devices. But repair shops won’t be able to do anything for devices that cannot be repaired, such as Apple’s AirPods, a popular Christmas gift that sometimes runs out of stock during this period and which dominates sales of small wireless headphones. thread.
According to disassembly guide specialist iFixit, the AirPods Pro 2 are indeed one of the rare electronic devices that cannot be reassembled after being exposed: a scalpel is required to extract their battery, which irreparably damages their shell. in plastic. This operation is however necessary after a few years of life, when the endurance of the battery drops too much.
Burnt or buried
When a device cannot be repaired, the only eco-friendly way out is to send it for recycling. Alas, it’s not a viable solution for AirPods either, the materials of which are expensive to mine and repurpose. “We have tried to dismantle them, but it’s a nightmare, testify to the Monde Claire Maetz, quality and safety manager at Ateliers du bocage, specialist in manual dismantling. We thought of deboning them by tapping on them, but it’s dangerous, their battery could catch fire, and it’s not human work. »
To recycle AirPods, the royal way remains to send them directly to Apple, which pays a partner to carry out their manual dismantling. To do this, they can be dropped off in one of the brand’s twenty stores. Or, in case one is buying a new pair, one can get a pre-paid postage label from the manufacturer to have the old one collected at home.
Apple headphones very often end up incinerated in a furnace destined for hazardous waste, according to Ecologic
Still, the Cupertino (California) firm does not seem to care much about this information circulating: it has relegated it to the very bottom of its page devoted to recycling. In this same section, Apple rather highlights another sector: collection in the electronic waste bins of supermarkets. However, in this sector, the AirPods are not really recycled, or very rarely. According to Ecologic, an eco-organization mandated by the State to ensure the recovery of waste, choose and control recyclers, Apple headphones very often end up incinerated in an oven intended for hazardous waste, an operation which bears the name of “thermal upgrading”. Very few earphones whose materials are manually separated to be reused.
This trajectory, however disappointing it may be, nevertheless remains preferable to that of many AirPods, which end up in household trash as ordinary waste. “Consumers do not necessarily think of throwing them in bins dedicated to electronic waste”, says Jean-Jacques Campillo, operational optimization manager at Ecologic. They then end up incinerated with less care, or buried in landfills with their polluting metals, like ordinary rubbish.
The problem of small objects
Admittedly, AirPods are not the only electronic devices to end up in the incinerator, as Mr. Campillo reminds us, who counts some ” thirty “ in this case, “including wireless mice, connected bracelets, electric toothbrushes”. But they remain a special case among these objects:
“We have started to identify technical solutions which allow us to be optimistic for their medium-term treatment… except for two objects for which incineration will probably remain the only solution for a long time. These are hearing aids and headphones such as AirPods. They are too small to be crushed effectively and much too expensive to dismantle by hand, considering the little material that can be made from them. This would cost several thousand euros per ton, compared to a few hundred for incineration. »
Some direct competitor models of AirPods Pro are easy enough to disassemble for a repair shop to agree to change their battery
AirPods competitors, too, are too small to recycle unless they heavily subsidize their manual recycling. But they’re generally repairable, according to iFixit, which sets them apart from Apple’s headphones. The maneuver often requires a real talent for DIY, but some popular models, such as the Sony WF-1000XM3, direct competitors of the AirPods Pro, are easy enough to disassemble for a repair shop to agree to change their battery if one bring the spare part yourself. Provided you insist, because out of six shops contacted by us in several cities, only one smartphone repairer, based in Montpellier, agreed to take care of it for the reasonable sum of 30 euros.
Asked why it is not possible to disassemble its AirPods more easily, or if it intended to improve their repairability, Apple declined to comment. However, the American brand made a point of specifying that its engineers were working to use more recycled materials in its products: “AirPods Pro contain 100% recycled gold in the plating of multiple circuit boards and 100% recycled rare earth elements in all magnets. »
For the most eco-responsible consumers – who try to make their devices last and make the effort to repair them – it is therefore better to favor more repairable headphones, branded Sony and Samsung, for example. Or better still, classic hoop helmets, which are easier to recycle and have an additional ecological advantage: they don’t tend to fall and nestle in the most unfathomable hiding places or holes. Because this is the last defect that completes the AirPods as a special product: they are lost far too easily.