Even kindergartners know that when you make a mess, you have to clean it up. Alas, in the case of tech companies and the countless millions of wireless earbuds they produce, the mess is a burgeoning eco-disaster (for a deeper dive, see this blog post). Apple’s AirPods, which may last only a few years due to their small batteries, are a notorious example. That’s what makes Podswap, a startup that puts new batteries in otherwise dead AirPods, so enticing. Not only can this company bring your useless, headed-to-the-landfill AirPods back to life, but it is also challenging Apple and other big tech manufacturers to offer more-sustainable product designs and better practices to support them.
All of the technology that people surround themselves with has a lifespan, and when it gives up the ghost, most of it will spend its afterlife in a landfill. Apple’s AirPods are the poster child, as they have sold by the hundreds of millions over the course of several generations, yet each earbud has a relatively brief battery life before its performance substantially degrades—estimates vary widely, but anecdotally it seems to average around two years. And unlike with, say, Samsung’s Galaxy Buds, which an ambitious DIYer could open up to replace the batteries, as shown in this video, with AirPods it’s pretty much impossible to do the same. Apple does offer to recycle your AirPods if you return them, but you can’t trade them in for a discount on a new pair. That’s curiously out of character for Apple—the company enjoys a good reputation for its sustainability efforts overall—but the reality is that in this case Apple has either failed or put business ahead of principle. It’s noteworthy that Apple does offer buybacks for other battery-powered devices such as iPhones, iPads, MacBooks, and iMacs (all of which can have much longer lifespans) but not AirPods.
That’s where Podswap comes in. The company’s business model is uncomplicated. In exchange for $60 (plus $5 shipping) and your pair of dead first- or second-generation AirPods, Podswap will send you a pair of refurbished Apple earbuds with brand-new batteries. The company takes your old AirPods, opens them up, swaps in a new battery, and then reseals them, sterilizes them, and sends them to another customer. Rinse, repeat. If you are an AirPod devotee, you know that $65 is a bargain. AppleCare insurance is $29 but lasts just two years. After that, Apple charges $69 for a single replacement AirPod, or $49 per AirPod for battery service. A new pair with a charging case costs at least $130.
What makes all of this possible is that Podswap claims to have figured out an efficient process for quickly cracking open AirPods, which is no small feat because the earbuds are notoriously difficult to open up without trashing them. (You can find tutorials online, but it’s far beyond the chops of a typical DIYer—notably, iFixit scores the process as a 0 out of 10.) A Podswap representative says the company uses a combination of manual labor and robotics—robots!—but Podswap is cagey about revealing exactly how it makes its secret sauce.
Since I happened to have a pair of expired AirPods moldering in my drawer of dead tech, I decided to give Podswap a shot. I’m thrilled to say the experience so far has been magical. On the company’s site, I confirmed which generation of AirPods I had (currently Podswap can process only first- and second-generation AirPods, not Pros, but it’s working on that), placed my order, and paid. In four days a small box arrived with a padded envelope and another, smaller zip-top bag containing refurbished AirPods. I followed the instructions for pairing them with my existing AirPod charger, and that was it. Then I had five days to send my old AirPods back to the company using the same packing materials and a supplied shipping label. Podswap says you should get at least the same battery life and lifespan as on your original earbuds (the replacement battery Podswap uses has slightly greater capacity than the original), and the company disposes of old batteries via an R2 downstream service, which is a certified process of reclamation and recycling.
I have to point out that I opted to use Podswap precisely because my AirPods were no longer functional and well past their warranty. Unlike buying a pair of replacement earbuds from Apple, swapping with Podswap has no safety net (beyond Podswap’s modest 90-day warranty) if something goes wrong. For me the trade was still a good value and worth the apparent risk since it extended the lifespan of one device and relieved me of needing to buy yet another.
We at Wirecutter love that the founders of Podswap saw a huge sustainability problem and took it upon themselves to address it, but the fact that the company exists at all shows a failure of imagination—or perhaps even principle—on the part of Apple, a leader in the world of design and manufacture. (Apple declined to comment for this article.) In general, big tech companies have made good strides in sustainability, in no small part due to scattershot regulations that, for instance, require them to accept and recycle the devices they manufacture and sell. But there’s still a long way to go. We’re on board with the overarching tenet of the Right to Repair movement—that companies ought to design products so that they can be repaired. That includes using sustainable or recycled components as much as is feasible, as well as incentivizing customers to recycle through buyback programs. It just makes sense that battery-operated products should be designed with replaceable batteries, and that devices with customizable specs (such as memory and storage) should be user serviceable—without sacrificing their warranty status.
For now, though, kudos to Podswap for leading the way. Let’s hope that many others will follow in its footsteps.
