Ohh come on... Apple requires them to be shredded, after which some of the base metals can be recovered but there is still a ton of waste in that.
> products can easily last a decade
As long as you are fine with them reducing your battery life to get you to upgrade.
Apple, and the carriers have lots of incentive programs design to get people to "upgrade" the phones and when using those programs those phones go strait to recycle (i.e shredder)
Recycle is the LAST RESORT for sustainability, remember the triad is "REDUCE, REUSE, RECYCLE" Apple only even plays lip service to the Recycle part, and want to prevent the Reduce and Reuse part by preventing / disincentivizing repair and resell.
[1] https://www.apple.com/newsroom/pdfs/FY22_Q1_Consolidated_Fin...
Apple is not a company that "makes disposable earphones". AirPods are a tiny, tiny, tiny fraction of its business. The vast majority of its products can easily last a decade or more and are recyclable after that.
Saying that Apple is worth trillions because of a side product like AirPods is ludicrous. Make your argument without this sloppy, inaccurate Apple-blaming.