Most people upgrade tech more often than they need to – partly because they are caught up in the “gotta have the new one” lifecycle, and partly because batteries have worn out – and they may not realize that the non-replaceable battery is probably replaceable.
“Repair, reuse, recycle” is an old mantra that still applies today.
Less Than 40% of Us Recycle Old Tech. Some Are Even Taking a Risky Route, CNET Finds – CNET
I bought a 2015 Macbook Pro, Quad core i7 processor, 16 GB RAM, 2 GPUs, 512 TB SSD – for $127 – and at first, installed and ran Linux Mint on the system. Later, I decided to use the Opencore Legacy Patcher to install MacOS Sequoia (2025) on it – Apple won’t let us install newer OSes on their old hardware but at least up to now, there are hacking tools to bypass Apple’s anti-environmental end of life measures. The system is a great Macbook!
I also updated my 2010 Windows 10 PC. It had a quad core AMD processor – and runs fine. I added another SSD drive and installed Linux Ubuntu on that – and its quite fast. For a 2010 system, it plays 1440p Youtube videos fine, and almost plays 4K videos smoothly. Would I use it for video editing today? No, but that is what I used it for back in its heyday.
I also replaced the non-replaceable battery in another Macbook Pro. There is a lot of useful life left in old hardware that runs fine for almost everything we are doing today.
But most (per the article) just shove old systems in a drawer, out of sight, or trash them. Which is probably not the best outcome for the environment.
