Apple's death grip on American consumers beyond the realm of fundamental reason has never been more apparent than now with the release of the iPhone 7.

The new model boasts the run-of-the-mill improvements in capabilities, with a sleeker black exterior and improvements in the camera quality. It's missing just one essential asset that is an enormous part of my, and many other music-loving individuals' life.

The iPhone 7, in an outlandish marketing scheme designed to allegedly improve water resistance, has excluded the auxiliary jack that supports modern headphones.

This is an environmental abomination on a number of levels.

Anyone who has listened to portable music for the past nine years has either a pair of flimsy Apple headphones that are included with the purchase of a phone, or a higher quality of structured headphones like Beats by Dre.

Each of these individuals have one of two options regarding their listening habits should they purchase the new iPhone. The consumer may prefer to abandon all his previous methods of listening and jump on the Apple bandwagon with its new technology, disposing of the old headphones and creating a staggering amount of electronic waste.

On the other hand, the consumer may decide, like many rational Americans, that he would rather not throw away his year-old Beats, and instead is provided with a tiny rubber adaptor that is compatible with the iPhone 7's listening capabilities.

Apple's brilliance lies in the pure madness of the decision. Both choices are so wasteful, so incompatible with digital life as we know it, that consumers ultimately have no choice but to buy more.

Buy an adaptor, buy a new pair of headphones, dispose of each in favor of a newer model. The American capitalist system depends on our inability to recognize how dependent we truly are on big corporations and their products.

Apple believes that this trick, this tiny exclusion, will be passed off as technological advancement. It is, in fact, in its perpetuation of electronic waste, a basic infringement on our collective right not to destroy the resources of the planet that sustains us.

For the time being, make your current, auxiliary-equipped iPhones last. Corporate greed and consumer culture should never supersede the implications of climate change.