eBay Beefs Up Instant Sale Offers to Address iPhone Avalanche

When the iPhone went on sale through Verizon for the first time earlier this month, it set records for sales rates, and forced Verizon to stop pre-sales after less than 18 hours due to overwhelming demand.

While there is no shortage of first-time iPhone owners who have been champing at the bit for the wildly popular smartphone to break free from notoriously spotty AT&T service, it’s a safe bet that plenty of those new sales came from current iPhone owners trying to break free themselves from AT&T.

The question from an environmental perspective is: What will happen to all those iPhones? Although throwing away a functioning iPhone is not likely to be a common occurrence, it’s yet another example of the iPad phenomenon of last year: One shiny new gadget replaces a slightly older version, potentially sending thousands of devices into the e-waste bins of history.

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