The nuanced answer to this is they have a first mover advantage and make a great robot. The point of the thread is that new development is much cheaper for folks to figure it out. Recyclers are the most entrepreneurial people you will ever meet. we’ll figure out some good uses for this stuff when it gets cheaper.
Most folks when they think of recycling, think of the blue bin they put out every week.
That’s about 25% by weight of all that gets recycled in the country.
Metals, industrial scrap, and other sources are 75% of what gets recycled in the US.
We are blue collar businesses, with high labor costs. Many are exploring robotics actively for repetitive tasks. We have some robots in our process, looking for more when the ROI makes sense.
It may not be 100x, but there will be value in robots in recycling.
Lawyers and lobbyists paid lots of money to figure out how to subvert stuff.
OEMs may work to make stuff less consumer repairable/upgradeable to force folks to use their repair services that need stuff like bga reballing or soldering. Bye bye upgradable ram slots!
Things like software locks and restrictions in the name of ‘security’ will lock stuff down and make repair harder (see Apple’s part pairing)