Apple Earth Day Promo Lets You Turn Your Tech Trash into AirPods Cash
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Apple is one of the few companies that regularly marks the occasion of Earth Day each year. It uses the occasion to release its annual Environmental Progress Reports, touting its progress towards a greener manufacturing economy, and it often also highlights eco-focused content on its services like Apple Books and Apple TV and even runs special Apple Watch Activity Challenges.
This year was no exception. Earlier this week, Apple highlighted how the MacBook Neo is leading its greenest year ever, but it’s also bringing back a new initiative from last year that has some more direct consumer benefits.
From now until May 16, you can walk into an Apple Store with an old piece of Apple technology and effectively trade it in for 10% off many Apple accessories, including the AirPods 4 and even the AirPods Pro 3.
That last one is a nice bonus over what Apple did for Earth Day 2025, when the highest-priced accessory that qualified was the AirPods 4 with Active Noise Cancellation. Looping the AirPods Pro 3 in means you can effectively get $25 just for handing over an iPhone or Apple Watch that’s been taking up space in your junk drawer.
How To Get Your 10% ‘Recycling’ Discount
The Earth Day Promotion runs from Thursday, April 16 until Saturday, May 16, and is only valid at physical brick-and-mortar Apple Stores in the United States. Sadly, that means you’ll be out of luck if you don’t have an Apple Store nearby, as the promotion won’t save you enough to justify the cost of the gas these days.
The list of eligible items for this year’s promotion is also considerably more limited. Last year, Apple would accept any piece of consumer electronics, from AirPods and iPods to computers, displays, hard drives, printers, and more.
This year, that list is limited specifically to the iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Apple Watch. Apple isn’t even accepting Apple isn’t even accepting its own peripheral products, much less third-party smartphones, laptops, or tablets.
That said, Apple isn’t limiting these to recent models, which makes sense as you’ll likely get better trade-in values for anything released in the past few years. Even a standard 2017 iPhone 8 trade-in will fetch you $35 against the purchase of a new iPhone, making it rather pointless to simply “recycle” one as part of this promo.
However, if you’ve got an original Apple Watch “Series 0” or an old iPhone 3GS kicking around, those fully qualify — and they don’t have to be in working condition, as you’re handing them over for recycling, not refurbishment.
The promotion still lets you recycle up to five devices at once to get a 10% discount off up to five Apple accessories, but the catch is that you have to hand over your old device and purchase the new accessory at the same time. There’s no “store credit” option here; the discount is applied at the time of purchase. It’s not clear how closely Apple will track this, but the terms of the offer say that you’ll need to present a valid photo ID, and in some cases local laws may also require it to save this information, so Apple could also use this to determine how many times you’ve taken advantage of the promotion.
You can find a full list of the qualifying accessories in the 2026 Earth Day Promotion Terms and Conditions. It encompasses all of the current in-ear AirPods, along with many Beats earphones and the Beats Pill speaker, plus the Apple TV 4K, Magic Mouse, Magic Trackpad, and Magic Keyboard (the Mac version, not the iPad one). The Apple Pencil, Apple-branded Apple Watch bands, adapters, cables, chargers, iPad cases and iPhone cases are also eligible, as are Beats-branded cables and cases.
