If you try to shred-recycle Apple’s new Airpods they will catch on FIRE.

So if you get yourself some Airpods, and you manage to keep them long enough to be recycled –

• Which is to say, you don’t lose one down the sink.
• (It’ll always be just one.)
• Or the toilet.
• Or the heating vent.
• Or have the dog swallow one.
• Or your kid.
• Or have it plop into the meatloaf while you’re not looking and get cooked.
• Or have one just shoot out of your ear when you turn too fast and then it lands on the floor and then somebody steps on it and maybe that person will fall and maybe he won’t but either way you’ve just watched an expensive piece of tech get some terminal stress testing.

…so assuming that you can actually own one until it dies of old age – whatever you do, don’t send them in for regular recycling.

The AirPods contain three lithium-ion batteries, one in each pod and one in an accompanying charging case.

Recyclers can shred wired headphones and send them to a smelter that will melt them down for the copper inside. But the lithium-ion batteries in AirPods cannot be shredded because they could catch fire while being destroyed.

And FIRE BAD.

Moe Lane

PS: I think that it’s hysterical that the first thing that pops up on a search on Amazon for ‘airpods’ is a page full of goram Airpod Straps. Witness the awesome power of the free market, my droogies: because apparently I’m not the only person out there who thinks that this product is an expensive series of mishaps just waiting to happen.