That's not the case though, they are finding. A person like you or me might follow the process correctly, but a company going bankrupt or aging out old equipment doesn't care nor have any incentive to properly unlock their machines before shipping to a recycler. Thus contributing to massive waste.
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> but a company going bankrupt or aging out old equipment doesn't care nor have any incentive to properly unlock
This is not true. The bankruptcy process attempts to recover as much value from assets as possible, and so creditors and the process should absolutely care to properly unlock in order to extract maximum value.
Similarly, aging out old equipment is still sold to make money, and unlocking should achieve more resale value.
The incentives are absolutely there. And the article does absolutely zero investigation as to where exactly there's a breakdown in incentives or communication, or if it's even a major issue at all. Maybe the process is working 99% of the time.
The user who refused to unlock it before selling and/or the purchaser who did not check that it was unlocked before purchasing are the ones contributing to massive waste here, not Apple.
When that user has died or otherwise doesn't exist, then it's hard to blame them. The only remaining thread of blame leads to Apple.
Unless this is what's happening in the majority of cases I don't think it's fair to focus on it. My hunch is that most of the laptops in that article are either stolen or dumped by users/corps who couldn't be bothered to unlock them.
only due to the systemic waste apple has created by designing the system in this way
Recyclers will quickly find that they should not accept the machines unless the seller has unlucked them.
If bankcrupt, the original company may have a duty to unlock them because they will be worth more.