OK, I'll recant slightly and agree that recycling some things into lamps instead of letting them end up in the landfill, is legit. How to encourage Joe Random out there to check around about his "fresh from the barn" WE desk stand before drilling holes into it, remains to be seen.
As for electric meters, I want my old analog meter back, since it didn't collect fine-grained details on my power usage that the utility could sell to God-Knows-Who, to figure out e.g. when I'm awake, when I'm asleep, and when I go to the bathroom, and then if the latter is off schedule, push ads for laxatives into my email.