Data centers, whose expansion is being fueled dramatically by the artificial intelligence boom, have a far bigger carbon footprint than previously estimated, according to a new study. The sprawling, power-hungry sites, used to store critical IT infrastructure like servers, are being built worldwide by companies and countries as AI applications…
Yeah, that’s mostly a regulation/legal incentives situation, combined with lack of education on the side of the execs.
It is possible to sell devices as “defective”, even if they aren’t defective. That way you don’t have warranty or other legal obligations.
Similar story with the “Scrap the whole device for data privacy reasons”. That’s not a thing. Scrapping the storage media, sure, totally. Scrapping the mainboard, case and power supply? That’s crap.
But the main issue is that there’s no incentive for companies to reuse devices versus scrapping them. So they scrap the whole thing without regards to anything else, because it’s a single decision that requires no further thought und it’s cheap enough that it doesn’t matter.
If they’d have to pay for full recycling cost, so the cost for actually turning 100% of the device back into usable raw components, then they will instantly start giving those away for free.