The Waste of Apple

What ever happened to that iPod you returned because of (insert problem here), anyway?

Chances are, the whole darn thing was destroyed.

As it turns out, Ingram Micro handles Apple products that folks send back for whatever reason. They have a big ole cage in one of the buildings where they inspect the products for defects, I imagine to make sure that it really does have dead pixels, or it started smoking and sparking on it’s own, rather than because you were inside it trying to replace the battery. Or, what if there’s absolutely nothing wrong with the product, you just sent it back because they happened to send you the wrong capacity iPod?

Every couple of days, if not every day, I get huge bags jam packed with empty iPhone, iPod, iPod nano, iPod touch, you name it, boxes, to throw in the trash compactor with all the other warehouse garbage. Not just the boxes, actually, but all packaging is included. This alone I thought was extremely wasteful, because those boxes and instruction manuals could be re-used after they fix and/or determine there is nothing wrong with the product and then sent out to different, happier customers, right? Turns out I was wrong. This would involve there being any product to send out to different, happier customers.

Regardless of what the problem with the product is, or if there’s even no problem at all (I found a box last week when I was snooping through them that said an 80GB iPod was in a 160GB iPod box), rather than replacing defective parts and reselling them, they actually drill holes through them and dispose of the evidence. The amount of wasted materials that goes into all this is staggering. I wouldn’t want to try to count the number of empty boxes I throw (or shovel, when they don’t bother to bag them) in to the trash compactor in a week. Apparently the same thing happens to many other products that IM handles returns for.

So, next time someone tries to sell you a “refurbished” iPhone… check for holes, first.

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