This may extend he computer's usable life but what happens to those computers once the student is done with them?
In my affluent neighbourhood, computers are often dumped at the roadside. Our council does have a recycling program for e-waste but I'm not sure of the transparency of the operation in terms of what percentage ends up in landfill.
I'm not condoning Apple's actions from the re-use point of view here but in the longer term, shredding computers at an industrial scale may be better for the environment than having a graveyard of 20 year old computers buried in a massive hole at the municipal tip.
They get recycled just years later after more value is extracted out of them. We teach our students that electronics and batteries have special recycling procedures.
I did most of my work for a couple of years on an expensive gaming rig found out by the dumpster. The RAM had been removed but everything else was still there (including a hard drive with a bunch of porn and virus).
Replaced the dirty drive, new RAM and it was far better than any machine I could justify buying at the time.
In my affluent neighbourhood, computers are often dumped at the roadside. Our council does have a recycling program for e-waste but I'm not sure of the transparency of the operation in terms of what percentage ends up in landfill.
I'm not condoning Apple's actions from the re-use point of view here but in the longer term, shredding computers at an industrial scale may be better for the environment than having a graveyard of 20 year old computers buried in a massive hole at the municipal tip.