Most "Recycled" electronics are sent back to china at least in part

Edit: summary at https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_waste_in_China

China is trying to shut this game down because it is bad for their own environment.

This is good. It also appears that a larger share of US e-waste is actually handled in the US then I remembered (its been trending up since the 1990s i think). I have no idea of the numbers but environmental regulations be equal (which they are not but we can one day they are) this seems more efficient to my brain.

Actually, that is more about rare earth elements being recovered, ever since the Chinese supply scare a few years ago (which is also related to the environment as rare earth processing is incredibly dirty if done cheaply). Anyways, there is a lot more effort to recycle and re-use these elements for economic reasons.

Sure but it seems a little inefficient to send them individually is my point.

You never ship them individually, you use containers. And it's probably quite efficient: the shipping boats have to return to China anyway to get more stuff.

It's basically free.

There's far more stuff coming from China to the west than vice-versa. A ship can't travel empty, but needs to be ballasted with an appropriate weight of cargo. If there isn't enough booked cargo on the return leg to China, they'll make up the weight with scrap metal or rubble.

I'm referring to the shipping of the broken goods to amazon individually. That's the part I'm critical of.

Sure, send them back to China, I don't care, it just seems silly that we would all just mail our broken junk back one piece at a time to AMazon who then puts it in a container and sends it to China.

Better to take it to alocal recycling facility for them to send it en masse. Have Amazon give you a voucher to handle the recycling fee.

Trucks coming from the Amazon warehouse also have to come back.

Still, Amazon just gifted me an item when I tried to return it since I ordered it by mistake (and I was honest on the form). I wouldn't be surprised if they tried to avoid recycling returns too.