They're responding to the market demand. Much like air travel, consumers have repeatedly shown to chase the cheapest price even when the quality they get in return is awful. I would love to buy durable and quality products instead of cheap junk that breaks in a year. The problem is that we're in a race to the bottom and it is safe to assume that all goods are cheap, made in China garbage that will break/become obsolete soon anyway, so might as well get the cheapest. There are exceptions of course, but it's really hard to be informed about everything you buy, and price is the first thing you see.
I'm really not a proponent of regulation in general, but if there was one thing I would choose to regulate, it would be companies that go out of their way to ensure products fail early.
But yeah, there's really no solution to such a problem. A more educated consumer would be nice, but people can't be bothered to care when a replacement item is never more than a day away.
I think the blame is shared. There's almost always corners being cut when it comes to pollution in large scale manufacturing, and its usually just to save a penny or two on the dollar.
Its all a very good argument for returning to the durable goods of the industrial revolution. Right now companies are producing junk products that are designed to fail so they can sell more. If companies produced quality products again, these emissions would be easily halved due to the reduced demand alone. Of course companies would never do this since it hurts their profits, but one can dream.