It all depends on what requires more energy: breaking apart the airpods to replace the battery, or recycling and delivering a new pair. If the factory line is efficient enough it may be greener to replace instead of repair.
Of course it can be argued that if apple had designed them for easy battery replacement repair would be so easy as to always be greener.
It's not a stretch to call it greenwashing when a replacement is marketed as a repair, no matter what else they do. Especially since a full replacement for battery drain inevitably leads into their recycling process - if they think that their recycling process is even better than replacing the battery, why lie?
> Apple pays recyclers for the manual labor required to recover materials, even though it significantly exceeds the value of the materials being recovered.
The criterion for recycling isn't whether it's profitable or not. Why would you get any recognition for profitably recycling?