Activation Lock Is Destroying Millions of Working Phones (And There’s Nothing We Can Do)

A security feature designed to stop phone theft is quietly generating enormous amounts of electronic waste — because nobody told people to turn it off before donating or recycling their devices.

Every major phone manufacturer now has a security feature designed to make stolen phones useless. Apple calls it Activation Lock. Samsung calls it Reactivation Lock. Google, Motorola and LG call it Factory Reset Protection. The idea behind all of them: if someone steals your phone, they can’t reset it and use it as their own.

As anti-theft measures, they work. As a side effect, they’re generating enormous amounts of electronic waste — because people forget to disable them before selling, donating, or recycling their devices.

A phone with an active lock that nobody can authenticate is functionally dead. It can’t be reset. It can’t be reused. It can’t even reliably be stripped for parts anymore. It goes to the shredder.

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The Scale of the Problem

The Wireless Alliance, a US electronics recycling facility running over 30,000 phone and tablet donation programmes, received over 66,000 reusable iPhones with Activation Lock still enabled between 2015 and 2019. All of them were scrapped — not because they were broken, but because a software lock made them unusable. By 2018, one in four iPhones they received were locked. Refurbishers across the industry report this ratio has grown every year since.

This isn’t a fringe problem. It’s systematic.

Schools retire fleets of iPads without removing MDM profiles or Apple IDs. Companies hand off old phones without clearing accounts. People upgrade and drop their old device in a donation box without disabling Find My iPhone. In every case, the downstream result is the same: a working device that nobody can use.

This matters to anyone in the phone repair and refurbishment industry — and increasingly, to schools and organisations managing device fleets.

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Why Repair Shops Can’t Help

These locks operate at server level. Apple’s Activation Lock checks against iCloud. Samsung’s checks against Find My Mobile. Google’s FRP checks against your Google account. No local software tool, no hardware modification, and no legitimate repair process can override them.

Apple does have a support process for Activation Lock removal, but it’s slow, bureaucratic, and routinely rejects requests even when the applicant provides proof of purchase. People who’ve bought devices at auction, inherited phones from deceased relatives, or received devices from organisational clear-outs all hit the same wall.

From a repair industry perspective, this creates a growing category of devices that are beyond help — not because of hardware failure, but because of a software decision made by the original owner (or more often, not made at all).

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Parts Are Now Locked Too

Until recently, locked phones still had value as parts donors. A locked iPhone with a working screen could donate that screen to repair another device. In 2024, Apple closed that door.

With iOS 18, Activation Lock extends to individual components — the battery, display, and cameras. Parts from a locked device carry the lock with them. If installed in another iPhone, they can’t be properly calibrated without the original owner’s Apple ID password.

Apple presents this as anti-theft protection for components. But the overwhelming majority of locked devices received by recyclers were never reported lost or stolen — they were simply forgotten.

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The Environmental Cost

The UK disposes of roughly 25 million mobile phones annually and ranks as the second-highest e-waste producer per capita globally, at around 23.9 kg per person each year. Only 31% of UK e-waste gets properly recycled. A WWF-commissioned study found 11.1 million phones were thrown away in the UK in 2020 alone — not counting the estimated 92 million devices hoarded in households over the past five years.

The UN Environment Programme considers them one of the most resource-intensive products by weight on the planet.

Every locked phone that gets shredded instead of reused means a replacement needs to be manufactured from scratch. Same carbon cost. Same mining. Same supply chain emissions. Activation locks don’t just destroy phones — they destroy the environmental benefit of keeping them in circulation.

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Right to Repair Doesn’t Cover This

The Right to Repair movement addresses whether you can fix a device — access to parts, tools, documentation. Activation locks address something more fundamental: whether a device can exist after its first owner is done with it.

In the US, refurbishers formally petitioned the FCC in 2024 to treat software locks as an e-waste issue. States like Oregon and Colorado have passed laws restricting parts pairing. But activation locks themselves remain largely unregulated.

In the UK and EU, legislation has moved on repairability scores and spare parts availability. Nobody is directly addressing the question of what happens when a working device is permanently bricked by a security feature the owner forgot to disable.

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What Would Actually Fix This

• Lock expiry. If a device hasn’t checked in with the owner’s account for a set period — say, two years — the lock should automatically release. The anti-theft purpose has been served.
• Certified unlock pathways. If a device hasn’t been reported lost or stolen, certified recyclers and refurbishers should be able to unlock it for reuse through a verified process — not through the current bureaucratic dead end.
• Point-of-disposal checks. Trade-in services, donation points, and recyclers should verify that locks are removed before accepting devices. Cheap, simple, and it would prevent thousands of phones from becoming unnecessary e-waste.
• Corporate and school fleet procedures. Organisations retiring devices need proper off-boarding. Every device unlocked and wiped before it leaves the building. This is basic IT hygiene, but it affects the entire downstream chain. If you manage a device fleet, talk to us about proper retirement procedures.

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If You’re Selling or Donating a Phone

iPhone

Samsung

Google Pixel / Android

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The Uncomfortable Truth

The same manufacturers publishing sustainability reports and promoting circular economy goals are the ones whose software locks send millions of working devices to the shredder every year.

We’re not arguing that activation locks shouldn’t exist. Phone theft is real and security matters. But the current system — where a forgotten lock permanently kills a device with zero recourse — is a design failure with massive environmental consequences.

A phone is 60–95 kg of carbon emissions, rare earth minerals from destructive mining, and months of someone’s budget. It deserves better than a shredder because somebody forgot a password.