Amazon is pumping out legions of budget
smart devices to fit your life
microwaves kids nightlights wall plug
speakers tablets and coming soon rings
and eyeglasses but what if I told you
that Amazon has a recycling program for
all these devices chances are this is
the first time you're hearing about it
unfortunately that recycling program is
the only option for Amazon product
owners after their warranty expires and
that warranty usually only lasts for one
year even if you're interested in doing
the repair yourself it's almost
impossible to find replacement parts
since they don't make them available for
purchase so we have a company pumping
out tons of cheap essentially disposable
products they're not providing
replacement parts or repairs after one
year hopefully they're at least
designing products that are long lasting
and easy to fix right well not exactly
we tore down an Amazon Fire HD 10 tablet
to investigate released at the end of
2019 the Fire HD 10 is a 10-inch Android
tablet with a 1080p display sporting a 2
gigahertz octa-core processor and 2
gigabytes of RAM these aren't
top-of-the-line specs for something
released any time in 2019 add to that
the fact that these things probably
won't be getting Android updates for too
long and you've got a tablet that's
basically already knocking on death's
door on the inside we are actually met
with a few pleasant surprises before the
whole thing turns out the rear case of
the tablet is held in place with clips
not adhesive making for a remarkably
simple opening procedure and the battery
is adhered to a rigid metal plate that
comes out with 10 screws again no
adhesive to fight so a battery swap
would actually be a breeze to reform if
replacements were available what's the
rub you ask well after the battery comes
out things start to fall apart pretty
quickly in what was likely an effort to
cut production costs the speaker wires
are soldered to the motherboard and
heavily glued in place this complicates
the removal of the rest of the
components including the screen unless
you have soldering equipment on hand or
are willing to carefully excavate the
delicate wires even if you do have the
equipment and the patience any repairs
beyond this point will likely be
needlessly time-consuming which is
especially problematic considering this
tablet only cost $150 at full price
speaking of the price it's here we have
to mention perhaps the most damning
issue for these tablets thanks to that
low price tag and their middling
performance it's not a stretch to say
that most customers won't even consider
repair when something does happen to
them we wrote a post about this and
Amazon responded
a spokesperson pointed out the company's
pledge to be carbon neutral by 2040 said
that refurbishment and trade-in programs
have kept millions of devices from
ending up in landfills in 2019 alone and
noted that many Amazon products are
still in use after five years so what
our amazon's customer is supposed to do
with their broken devices let's take a
look at that recycling program you
mentioned earlier once you find it the
Amazon recycling program is a kludge
reform where you type in the number of
Amazon devices you have in each product
category and get a shipping label there
are also a measly 10 US locations where
Amazon will accept discarded electronics
as a result the burden of recycling
cheap products Falls to towns and cities
most of them already drowning in e-waste
even if Amazon's mail and recycling were
wildly successful though recycling
should be the last resort for
electronics we should be making products
that stand the test of time here's our
issue for a long time nobody has treated
Amazon like the giant hardware
manufacturer it actually is meanwhile
they're selling loads of electronic
devices at artificially low prices and
their product responsibility policy is
at best a quiet and very mixed message
and it's high time that we demand better
for starters we love to see them provide
repair parts to the customers and use
recycled materials and their new devices
the way that Apple and some of the other
big tech companies do we'd also love to
see Amazon promoting their trading and
recycling information to all customers
the same way they promote their other
environmental efforts what do you think
of Amazon it's disposable tech and what
should consumers do to hold them
accountable give us your thoughts in the
comments below