There are legitimate concerns about this tech and you cannot write them off because you never "need to cross southwest the desert". I'd always take a more durable product versus one that has an (alleged) initial lower footprint but likely needs replacement sooner. People that buy a V6 that will last them a minimum of 20 years and possibly into the 30s, are greener than who leases an electric car and replaces it every three years.
Leaving the infamous but classic Slashdot car analogy, datacenters are the last place where you want less reliable tech, because cost of failure directly impacts revenue. They spend a lot for ECC memory and redundant PSUs, it'd be crazy to use materials that dissolve. Rugged outdoors electronics, which obviously include phones and laptops, are also not candidates. What remains is cheap junk that if one cares about the environment should not buy in the first place.