It has always been green washing. Apple agresively fights any repair laws and spare parts laws. Their claims about recycling are there just for show just for the eco crowd. Most people will feel good thinking the products wont end up in waste but they all buy new anyway.
Absolutely this. Recycling electronics is the option of last-resort; it takes lots of electricity, requires being shipped around the globe, and you're still left with waste too.
The goal should be to reduce and reuse before resorting to recycling. Our dependency on new electronics should be brought down to marginal utility, and we should be enabled to re-use unsupported, partially-broken or repaired smartphones. Instead, we're corralled into a box of compatibility and told to trade-in once we get angry enough at our OEM. I know I'm not the only one with a box of iPods that can do precisely jack-shit now that Apple doesn't update them anymore.
