When buying a lead-acid battery or a remanufactured car part, there's often a core charge that is rebated when you return the old part. The last battery I purchased it was $22 (on a $170 battery). Now, I would've returned the old battery anyway because it's easy, convenient, and what the heck else would I do with it, but $22 was also a pretty decent incentive.

So I'd think you just need to get the incentives right: make it easy and convenient to return and provide a financial reason to do so.

On the other hand, last year I replaced all the smoke alarms in my home. It is essentially impossible to recycle the old alarms. Here's what my town says:

"Only a single household smoke alarm/detector will be accepted with your trash for garbage collection. If you have more than one, they must be disposed using one of these listed options; https://deq.nc.gov/conservation/recycling/general-recycling-... or, check manufacturer for take-back program."

Here's what my county says (in the "unacceptable items" section):

"Smoke detectors contain trace amounts of radioactive material. The recommendation is for consumers to return the smoke detectors to the manufacturers or contact NC Radiation Protection at 919-814-2250."

Here's what my state says:

"The Solid Waste Section recommends that it is safe for a single household fire/smoke detector to be disposed of in a lined municipal solid waste landfill."

No manufacturer has a take-bake program. The county isn't on the same page with the town and the state. So in the trash they went, one per week. Took 3 months to get rid of them all.

Next time buy optical smoke alarms, they are better [1] and don't contain radioactive materials.

[1] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=DuAeaIcAXtg&t=1196s&pp=ygUWc21...

I went with three First Alert SC7010B, one per floor, which are photo electric and detect both smoke and CO. For the rest of the alarms I used First Alert 9120B which are ionizing. I figure I covered all my bases that way. I think they have a life span of a decade so it'll be a while before I need to replace them again.

How can it possibly be worse to need to manage a replaced part vs a complete replaced device?

Not that difficult to imagine:

- Users generally replace a device less often than replace a part.

- Users usually throw away a part, but not a device. As a matter of fact resales value of Apple devices are higher than for other makers.

- Apple have the mean to recycle trade-in devices and not landfill them. Users may not.

- Devices with replaceable parts may have shorter lifecycle than the ones without, since they are more brittle and complex.

About the only argument for replaceable part is user freedom to fix their devices.

That's fair. I'm assuming the majority case is simply: device breaks, can't be fixed easily, gets thrown away. I think we'd need some actual data to have a meaningful discussion about it.

That's a reasonable assumption. Anecdotally, on my local high street, there are at least 5 places--one official Apple service centre (not an Apple Store)--that offer battery and screen replacement for all mobile devices and tablets. At least 3 have been there for more than 5 years, including the official Apple one. There must be some demand for them all to survive.