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There are lots of parts that can and should be recycled (at the very least the battery), so that sounds like a waste.

Serious question, but how do they intentionally recycle phones/batteries/ ewaste? My first guess would that everything goes through a shredder. Precious metals and plastics are then separated because any kind of disassembly at scale would be infeasible.

High value items are disassembled by robot, like in the case of iPhones. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MC81peMLEfo

Medium value stuff is shredded into a big pile and then they leach the gold off it with cyanide. It has a much higher concentration of gold then raw gold ore.

Low value stuff is shipped to poor countries where the copper is extracted by burning and picking through the ash. Very toxic process.

They could have tools there to quickly pop out the battery so you can recycle it separately from the rest of the phone.

They would need to pay a technician to do that. Having the typical consumer do that would definitely result in injury and fire.

Only because of how they're installed. This is yet another reason why we should go back to having user-replaceable batteries.

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