The absurd part is that we needed a memory shortage to rediscover that perfectly functional electronics don’t automatically become garbage when the phone does.

It doesn't seem absurd to me at all. A budget phone's primary goal is low cost. Labor is generally more expensive than new parts. So buying new memory and consuming less labor has made economic sense up until now. The only change now is that the cost of the memory has increase beyond the cost of the additional labor to extract memory. So the budget approach is reuse.

Most of the time consumers don't buy pre-owned/used items over new for ethical reasons. They buy them because they're cheaper than new items.

Idk if it's still the case but phone memory used to go bad over time, reducing in size and speed with usage

From an environmental standpoint, I don't think this has much benefit. Using old tech as-is is great, but the energy used to dismantle and re-engineer old parts at that level probably exceeds the energy needed to build new.

It's only beneficial in that you don't need to break ground on a new factory to do it.

Even if you disclosed this no avg consumer is going to be educated enough on what this actually means to make an informed decision.

Functionally making it a moot point.

Still disclose it tho