Lead free solder is fine. When RoHS was first implemented, a lot of manufacturers had trouble changing their processes for the new solder. The result was a plague of bad, broken solder joints.

Nowadays, lead free solder is accounted for starting in the design stage. Manufacturers have had 15+ years of experience with leadfree solder and have largely worked out the issues.

Lead-acid batteries are extensively recycled. Electronics are usually just dumped in the trash, making the lead issue much more important.

>while we're still using lead acid batteries with dozens of pounds of lead in every car out there

Mostly those cars stay outside and the batteries tend to be expensive and highly recycled, electronics on the other hand, show up everywhere and have a poor history of recycling.

Batteries are recycled, check it out:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kNGg0P7B5fI

Battery retailers will pay you $25 for the old one and even if you just dump it, desperate people will collect it and hump it down to the recycler to get the core refund.

Nobody wants your old soldered electronics. That stuff is nothing but trash.

All of the battery retailers around where I live (southern Indiana, USA) stopped paying for old lead-acid batteries years ago. Only the local scrap metal yard still pays for them, and they only pay $5 per battery. People only bring in their old batteries for recycling because it waives the core charge.

You just contradicted yourself. The core charge is them paying you for the old battery.