Sonos contributing to electronic waste

Total capitalism here, they need to sell units for shareholders...I’m reading media posts on how great it is SONOS are offering to recycle, but looking at the ‘trade-up’ they’d rather you drop it at any electronic recycling (typically in the UK that’s the local tip) as it’s cheaper than returning to SONOS  … it’s such a scam; very very disappointed with the ethics here.

These units aren’t even that old, my Play 5 was registered in 2017 and is on the ‘trade-up’ list, so why would I scrap that?! If I wanted Alexa support I’d just by the little plug-in for >£20 etc. 

It’s a company under threat from ever increasing competition on the smart speaker market that has clearly got to the bottom of the barrel to increase unit sales.

Thanks for the generic reply. I get that you want new products out there but you are throwing away perfectly fine usable items. The ‘old’ products are exactly how they were when you originally sold them, there’s nothing wrong with them, they are still as good as they were.. it’s just that newer (debatably better) products have been released. You could have offered a used and approved 2nd had scheme or something.

‘condition of this offer’ - may be a condition but you’re not enforcing it or even asking for proof from retailers

‘ship it back to Sonos at our expense’ - If retailers can’t be bothered to recycle they’re definitely not going to go to the effort of creating a shipment + shipping individual products back to you is extremely in-efficient and bad for the environment. If this was a serious option, products could be taken back to the distributors on a weekly basis on the same lorries that make the deliveries. 

I’m obviously not fully in the loop and don’t know anywhere near the amount to really make a judgement but it just seems from the outside that Sonos as a $1billion+ company you could be doing more..

If you are talking about Sonos and SMB,  Jeremy Allison offered to help Sonos with their SMB issue back in 2017  

https://en.community.sonos.com/setting-up-sonos-228990/sonos-support-for-smb-2-0-protocol-6739642/index2.html#post16127262

What do you mean by independent project? I don't think I understand what you are saying. 

There is none such for where I live, so this doesn't affect me for good or bad. Why can’t you pretend to live where I do? For just this limited purpose?

Digressing a little, where I think different from many here is in not seeing much value in over 90% of the software upgrades that Sonos has done since the time I bought the kit in 2011. I am pretty sure that the kit would have continued to do - as it does today - all it could back in 2011 when I bought it, even where my listening sources have changed significantly from NAS to music services, even if Sonos had not done anything to the software than keep it functional - this is just home audio after all, where the basic tech, even when digital, hasn't changed since CDs were introduced. 

But complaining about that is pointless IMO when there is the much bigger picture of how waste, electronic or otherwise, is being generated by lifestyles that are not environmentally sustainable, now at a global level. If and when that elephant in the room gets addressed beyond lip service/tokenism, this will too. And as long as that one doesn’t, this one is a minor issue.

PS Sorry about the quoting - can’t use this new system at all...

It is a very small part of the problem, even if one stayed with just the domain of computer tech where Intel and Microsoft were the shining beacons of this bloat. Expanding to autos, every new model car seems to be bigger than the ones preceding, and not just because people are getting fatter. It is an epidemic, the underlying issue of how lives are lived these days.

My problem is with those that pick on the pennies while living blissfully unconcerned about the pounds.

I hadn’t realised that the retail margins on Sonos products was public knowledge.  What is it?

I don’t particularly disagree, but there’s an old adage ‘look after the pennies and the pounds will look after themselves’…. And in terms of Sonos kit, which is presumably the subject under discussion here, it’s a very big deal...

I did not say or mean that, as I thought you would know very well.

I am referring to talking about the environmental evils of the Sonos trade up scheme while at the same time living a life supported by enormous personal - however unseen that may be - fossil fuel/energy consumption. Acting on both on a personal level is necessary to avoid being labelled a hypocrite, even if one can't influence things on a more than personal, let alone global, level.

It isn't fair; not because I believe what Sonos, now formally a for profit corporate, says about sustainability, but because I don't see how their “promoting” bricking of working units is hostile to the environment. 

I have some old Sonos kit - Connect/Connect Amps. Paying 70% of the cost of new equivalents to get the same functionality - for the most part - makes no sense to me. So I would ignore the offer at no cost to the environment via electronic waste.

Are financial reasons any less valid than technical reasons?  Should a company not strive to make a profit?