There are plenty of ways around that fact.
Preventing repair while changing nothing else generates more e-waste. But that's not what Apple does.
If you prevent repair in order to also do any or all of the following things at the same time enough, the result is less e-waste than if you didn't prevent repair:
- Use less environmentally harmful materials (e.g. on-board sockets, larger PCBs etc)
- Make the device last longer before it needs repair (reliability, longevity)
- Make the device easier to recycle
> Reuse and repair is FAR superior to recycle
It's a good goal, but it's only superior for sure if everything else is able to be kept the same to make it possible.
Some things really are better for the environment melted down and ground down and then rebuilt from scratch. I'm guessing big old servers running 24x7 are in this category: Recycling the materials into new computers takes a lot of energy, but just running the old server takes a huge amount of energy over its life compared with the newer, faster, more efficient ones you could make from the same materials. I would be surprised if not recycling was less harmful than recycling.
> What good does it do? They are still harming the environment.
When saying Apple should change they way they manufacture to be more like other manufacturers for environmental benefit, Apple being rated number 1 tells you that the advice is probably incorrect, as following it would probably cause more environmental harm not less.