What Really Happens to AirPods When They Die

Apple finally opens up about their complicated afterlife

Photo: Stephen Lam/Getty

AirPod owners love them. Everyone else, it can seem, hates them. Apple is, by all indications, selling oodles of them. But what happens to AirPods when they get old and die? Does the same seamless design that helped to make them iconic also make them an environmental abomination?

It’s a question a growing number of critics are asking as the Bluetooth buds nestle their way into ever more ears. Based on my conversations with e-waste recyclers, repairability experts, and Apple itself, however, the answer is neither as straightforward as you might hope nor quite as grim as you might fear.

Three years after their debut, a generation of AirPods is nearing obsolescence as their lithium-ion batteries degrade (or they get lost or dropped down the toilet) and owners upgrade to the new model, which came out in March. At the same time, a new wave of customers who initially eschewed the $159 ear-sticks is considering whether they might just be the sort of people who would wear them after all. While Apple doesn’t report sales figures for AirPods alone, the buds and the Apple Watch are part of a category that boomed to $5.1 billion in sales in the first three months of 2019 alone. Market research suggests that AirPods are by far the world’s best-selling wireless earbuds.

It makes sense that critics are scrutinizing AirPods anew, examining not just their features and performance but their entire life cycle — and not just their value to the people who buy them but their impact on the rest of us. While some gadget reviewers have continued to praise the devices for their clever design and ease of use, the April review in the New York Times of the newest generation was double-edged: “perfect earbuds, but they don’t last.”

Other outlets skipped straight to the downsides. Repair guide site iFixit called AirPods “disappointingly disposable” and gave them a repairability score of zero out of 10. And then there was Vice, which excoriated AirPods as “future fossils of capitalism” in a 4,000-word manifesto that took the devices to task for everything from their brief lifespan to their social-class semiotics — but most of all their environmental impact. The headline was a hammer blow: “AirPods Are a Tragedy.”

The piece made enough of a splash that the New York Times devoted an hourlong podcast episode to it and a prominent pro-Apple blogger penned a predictably defensive response. It also appears to have prodded Apple’s public relations department to open up more about AirPods’ recyclability than it has in the past — partly because the Vice story neglected to make clear that Apple actually does offer an AirPods recycling program. That oversight aside, the story succeeded in shining a spotlight on the dark side of a device that appears well on its way to ubiquity as we increasingly interact with our technology through voice and audio. So for any AirPods owner or prospective AirPods buyer who cares about sustainability in addition to convenience, the claims of critics deserve a closer look.

The environmental case against AirPods rests on four main points. First, they don’t last long: Lithium-ion batteries degrade over time, and there have been reports of AirPods failing to hold a charge after as little as 18 months. Second, they can’t be repaired: You can’t crack them open without special tools (and possibly some bloodshed), and even if you could, the components inside are tangled and glued together. Third, they can’t easily be recycled for the same reasons. And finally, it’s irresponsible to throw them in the trash both because they contain minerals that were mined at significant human cost and because their batteries could pose fire and toxicity hazards in waste dumps — though this is true of most modern gadgets.

That all sounds pretty bad, right?

You can’t crack them open without special tools (and possibly some bloodshed), and even if you could, the components inside are tangled and glued together.

When I contacted Apple for this story, I didn’t expect much of a response. The company is famous for being selective about its press relations. But I found the company more eager than usual to rebut the claim that AirPods are a planetary nightmare — a claim that appears to have caught Cupertino somewhat by surprise.

Apple didn’t dispute that AirPods’ batteries degrade with time, that they’re essentially impossible to repair, or that you shouldn’t throw them either in the trash or the recycling bin. But the company did seem to take issue with the notion that any of this is unique to AirPods or that they’re as damaging to the environment as the myriad much larger electronic devices that are already filling the world’s recycling plants and waste dumps. (According to a United Nations report, less than a quarter of all e-waste in the U.S. is recycled.)

Most of all, Apple wanted to make clear that you can recycle AirPods — or at least important components of them — and you can go through Apple to do it. There’s a link on the company’s website to order a prepaid shipping label, which you can use to send the device to one of Apple’s recycling partners by dropping it in a FedEx box. Apple says that it has accepted AirPods for recycling ever since they were released, although it was only this year that the company added the product as a specific category of return on the website. The company also noted that you can bring your defunct AirPods to any Apple Store for recycling. “As with all of our products, we work closely with our recyclers to ensure AirPods are properly recycled and provide support to recyclers outside of our supply chain as well,” the company said in a statement.

Apple wanted to make clear that you can recycle AirPods — or at least important components of them — and you can go through Apple to do it.

To substantiate its claims, Apple agreed to put me in touch with a spokesperson for one of the e-waste recycling companies it contracts with called Wistron GreenTech. It’s a Texas-based subsidiary of Taiwan-based Wistron, and it also contracts with Dell, among other electronics firms. Apple declined to name any of the other firms with which it contracts or to say how many partners it has. But Wistron apparently isn’t the only one; when I filled out Apple’s form for AirPods recycling, it sent me a shipping label addressed to a different company, Universal Recycling Technologies of Janesville, Wisconsin. That company did not respond to a request for comment.

Wistron confirmed to me that you can recycle key portions of AirPods, notably the battery, from which the mineral cobalt can be extracted. The problem is that the value of what can be recycled is unlikely to cover the cost of recovering it. With no automated system that can safely open AirPods or extract their components, each device has to be opened by a worker using hand tools, like pliers and jigs. Their first goal is to cleanly dislodge the battery and then the audio drivers, which can also contain precious metals. The battery is sent on to a specialized smelter to extract the cobalt, which can be reused, while the drivers are sent to precious metal refiners.

Apple has said in the past that it partners with recyclers to recover material from AirPods but has said little about the specifics of the process before now. It had also declined to explain why it won’t make that knowledge publicly available — a stance that left Lifehacker to muse in March that “we may not ever know the answer.” But Wistron’s representative disclosed to me that Apple pays his company to work on AirPods to cover the money it loses on each one. If recycling AirPods is a money-losing venture, that might help to explain why only Apple’s contracted partners are willing to do it. They are recyclable — but apparently not yet in an economical way.

Apple declined to discuss the economics of AirPods recycling. But the company told me that it will, in fact, provide recycling instructions to any recycling company that calls its AppleCare help line, provided the company is willing to work directly with Apple to ensure that the recycling is being done with the proper precautions.

To get some context for the Apple recycler’s claims, I contacted several independent e-waste recycling companies, including some near my home in Delaware and others in the Bay Area. As it turned out, none could add any relevant context because not a single one had seen customers bring AirPods in for recycling.

This suggests that people are either sending them back to Apple directly, throwing them in the trash, or stashing them in drawers — and perhaps also that AirPods’ lifespan isn’t capped at 18 months or even two years as some have suggested. While one widely cited AppleInsider test found that a pair of AirPods purchased in 2016 held less than half the charge of a new pair, some other tech reviewers have said their 2016 models still work just fine. Apple declined to provide information on AirPods’ expected lifespan except to note that it varies based on how heavily you use them. The company also declined to estimate how many AirPods have been returned via its recycling program.

Apple has said in the past that it partners with recyclers to recover material from AirPods but has said little about the specifics of the process before now.

I did find one nonprofit electronics recycler, Minneapolis-based Tech Dump, that said it would accept AirPods if anyone brought them in — though no one has yet. CEO Amanda LaGrange said her organization will find a way to recover what it can from the devices because encouraging recycling is part of its mission. (It also serves as a job training program for people facing barriers to employment.) But she criticized Apple for not making the battery replaceable, which could significantly extend the devices’ lifespan.

“I think for too long as consumers we’re just bought into the fact that whatever [Apple] is making, we need to have and whatever they’re making is probably the only way it could be designed,” LaGrange said. “In fact, probably all of our technology could be designed with the end of life in mind if they just took the time and resources to do it. And that’s why consumers have to bring pressure — to say, ‘We want to buy electronics that we can repair.’”

While the scrutiny of AirPods is warranted by their popularity, it bears noting that plenty of other small consumer electronic devices share the same basic features: a lithium-ion battery with a limited lifespan sealed snugly alongside other components in a case that has to be pried open by hand. LaGrange mentioned early-model Fitbits as one example. While these devices are unusually hard to recycle, they’re also quite small, which at least mitigates the sheer volume of their contribution to the world’s waste problems compared to, say, tablets, computer monitors, or even plastic bags and bottles. (By one count, 91% of the plastic produced around the world isn’t recycled.)

Apple did say that it’s working on figuring out ways to recycle AirPods and other Apple devices more efficiently; it launched a Material Recovery Lab in Austin last month for that purpose. Last year it showed off a recycling robot named Daisy that it says can disassemble 200 iPhones per hour, though it doesn’t work on AirPods. “There’s new technology needed,” said Lisa Jackson, Apple’s vice president of environment, policy, and social initiatives, in an interview with GreenBiz last month. “In some cases, recycling hasn’t made the strides forward that technology has.”

That’s one way to look at it. But Kevin Purdy, a writer for iFixit, sees the environmental challenge posed by AirPods from a different standpoint. Apple, he said, decided to prioritize a seamless, minimalist design aesthetic over one that would make the wireless earbuds more easily repairable and recyclable. “That’s a choice, something they value over everything else.”

“Apple is totally capable of making devices you can repair and service,” Purdy added, noting that the company’s iPhones and MacBooks are industry leaders in holding value as they age. But with the AirPods, “they’ve managed to achieve a perfectly un-reusable product.” He contrasted them with Samsung’s wireless Galaxy Buds, which are easy to open and take apart with common household tools and whose coin-cell batteries can be replaced. Where iFixit gave the AirPods a zero out of 10 for repairability, it gave the Galaxy Buds a 6 .

The fact that Apple allows customers to send them back to be recycled by hand is “not reassuring,” Purdy added. Most people probably don’t realize that’s an option, and even for those who do, Apple offers no financial incentive to return AirPods. That’s in contrast to late-model iPhones and MacBooks, which Apple pays customers hundreds of dollars to trade in. Apple’s website also does not seem to prompt customers to return their old AirPods when they buy new ones like it does with iPhones.

It seems fair to say that Apple has so far prioritized making the AirPods as appealing as possible to consumers and is just beginning to turn its attention to making them more sustainable now that they’re a hit. That’s understandable from a business perspective. It’s also a good reminder that, as much as the company touts its environmental initiatives, it is in some sense a luxury that Apple can afford only because its gadgets are popular enough to help the company record nearly $60 billion in net income in 2018.

In the grand scheme of the world’s environmental woes, AirPods’ contributions so far appear to be mostly symbolic — which is not to say they aren’t important. Unit for unit, they may not create much more waste than other small, lithium-ion-powered gizmos. But that’s a category that should grow explosively in the coming years, as voice assistants become a primary portal to the digital world: Bloomberg reported in April that Amazon is working on an Alexa-powered AirPods rival. AirPods’ wild popularity puts them at the vanguard of this new class of gadgets. It will be a black mark on Apple’s environmental scorecard, and a shame for the rest of us, if the company doesn’t also put itself in the vanguard of solving the problems these devices present.