PS: the other way to equalize the logistics advantage is to simply build the cost of the repair into the device. Require that all devices be sold with a bumper

PS: the other way to equalize the logistics advantage is to simply build the cost of the repair into the device. Require that all devices be sold with a bumper-to-bumper 10-year warranty with zero deductible. Drop your phone in the water? Free. Smash the screen? Free. People will bring their stuff in and fix it and keep it out of landfills, and vendors themselves will be incentivized to find ways to support their product lifecycle efficiently, because it's their own bottom line (and their own product sales prices). This is one of those diffuse problems like littering or jaywalking where we've kind of allowed the industry to redefine their problem as being your problem and invert the fault/blame. If straws are constantly ending up in the water it's fundamentally ineffective to hammer down on one random person, compared to regulating the root source, the business causing the problem. Which is of course why "recycling" (and not reuse or reduce of course) is promoted as a solution instead of regulation. Regulation would be effective, make companies pay for the full lifecycle of their product. If 10% of people litter and that costs $X per year to clean it up, that's McDonald's problem. And yes that would drive up prices quite a bit. But that's the lifecycle of owning the product, and if you want to incentivize repair over new, the price of new is inherently going to have to go up anyway. At least this way you get something out of it. Maybe instead of unlimited incidents you only cover the 80th percentile of incident rates per lifecycle. But again, the ironic thing is how much this looks like applecare and yet people utterly hate it.