The article's conflation of things being broken down into their component parts and recycled, vs things being "destroyed", is maddening and tendentious. Try not to fall for it.
The topic and language of the article makes it sound like the author, or the entity who commissioned the article to be written, stands to benefit financially from resold parts or refurbishing. The tone is too strong for something that is not a big deal, except to those who are in the business of profiting from the reuse/resale of hardware components.
Follow the money. "Won't someone think of the environment" is often a smokescreen used by those looking to seek policy changes for their own financial gain. Reading this article does not have me envisioning environmental motivations; I get the vibe of a lobbyist-like group pushing an agenda with their own financial incentive in mind.
There is an energy deficit creating workable electronics from raw materials, but that can be covered by a large flow of retail currency through an efficient sales and supply chain.
There is an energy surplus remaining after small profits have been extracted from many repurposed waste materials, especially workable electronics. Not much retail currency available, only wholesale but at least it's surplus.
However the "market" is balanced to the extreme disadvantage of the reuse/resale operators, and it looks like Koebler has been reporting things from that type of source:
Financial incentive is not always a bad thing, especially when there's no real greed, just pursuit of excellent business opportunity instead.
Plus financial incentive is not always driven by the desire for financial gains, sometimes more so the prevention of financial losses. From the poor soul who's desperate for his gear to be fixed cheap by the neighborhood hobbyist who only needs an online factory repair manual, to the corporation that invested heavily in tonnes[0] of top-dollar goods truly having 2x or 3x workable lifetimes, they would both benefit by participating in a smaller purchase-to-resale differential that would naturally exist if the secondary market was allowed to thrive with encouragement.
Cornering the consumers into a pure retail-to-scrap scenario (with a support lifetime limit for backup) does appear to be more of a major institutional policy effort disadvantageous to consumers, compared with the Right-to-Repair operators who appear dedicated to removing as much gear as possible from the retail-to-scrap cycle and preventing future resources from being tied up within it. Consumers would theoretically benefit the stronger the right to repair.
Even when there is not much financial benefit either way, at least the environment might suffer less.
