> If you wanna make that argument, wouldn’t it be better to force companies to opt you out of getting chargers and cables unless you explicitly ask for them when you make the purchase?

That is a natural step forward after the cables are unified. Even today, 80% of the electronic devices I'm buying are coming without a charger and this is all due to the fact that the market stabilized to USB charging (mini and now USB-C).

I still remember we used to have drawers full of old phone chargers...

I still have a small sack of those old chargers. Can't put them in the generic waste, nobody would buy them, and I've been too lazy to take them to the electronic waste recycling.

They already do that in Europe, IIRC my iPhone came with just a lightning to USB-C cable and no charger.

Yes, that was part of the proposal: https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/IP_21_...

> Unbundling the sale of a charger from the sale of the electronic device

But without a universal charger that doesn't make sense: if I still need a specific charger for a device, I'm going to have to buy that with the device anyways.

Apple already does that with chargers, new iPhones no longer come with charging bricks, just the cables. I'd be fine with not including the cables if the phones were USB-C, but since they're Lightning the likelihood of a new iPhone user already having a cable that will work is very low.

less cables needed = less waste

Yes but do cables contribute a significant amount of waste in general, worthy of being specifically regulated? I actually don’t know either way, so it would be nice to see some data.

you do not need data to know that hundreds of millions of people using one less cable will = hugely lessened waste