Millions of tons...? It's orders of magnitude less than that.

It's 56.1 grams for both buds and case. For comparison, 2 AA batteries is 46 grams.

They're tiny. In terms of e-waste, they're not even a rounding error. In terms of all devices to worry about, they're essentially last on the list. They're roughly the mass of the most popular consumer disposable batteries themselves.

(If you want to do the math, they sold ~90 million units in 2021.)

I used to think like this, but on closer inspection I realized that you create more waste/polution on every trip to the grocery store, or by driving a car for a week, or eating meat. Yes it's a shame that they are designed not to be repairable but there are so many more low hanging fruit in our everyday lives that we don't think about when it comes to environmental issues.

I've been using the same airpods v2 since some time in 2019 and whenever I end up replacing them, I won't really feel much regret at the small amount of e-waste they produce. I mean, I probably come across 2 or 3 e-cigarette things each time I take my dog for a walk.

I don't mean to engage in whataboutism but I've used those airpods for hundreds of hours. Seems like a pretty reasonable lifespan to me.

I believe Apple said they're recyclable and also made from recycled materials. Not ideal to have to replace the entire device, though

We'll live in a new paradigm: Earth plus Airpods!

A billion pairs of AirPods would weigh around 6614 tons.

I'm admittedly leaving out the cases, but just for lack of time. Somebody please do that math!