These are programmable devices given to programmers. The rate of these being thrown out or underutilized is so much lower than so much of human activity.

On the scale of hosting a hackathon, a few kgs of badges likely rates below the trash generated for just the take out food in terms of impact.

Maybe we can recognize that this is so minor of an issue that we don’t need to start here, or even really look too deep at this. Let’s fight these problems on a scale where it really matters.

What does your badge do? I'd love to see it!

They’re going to be much more expensive than JLCPCB, if they take the job at all.

Some conferences can find small businesses trying to get started who do the jobs at cost or a loss, but that’s rare.

Mostly cost for us. JLCPCB's scale lets them make money on orders that would be too small for most fabs. Quoting, ordering, and part selection are all a battle tested web form. They also stock most of the parts in-house, so a small order costs them almost no engineering time. A local fab probably wouldn't have any of these advantages. JLCPCB really have it down to a science.

My best guess is an experienced designer would have made fewer mistakes and been more familiar with the process, so maybe they save two iterations and can get the initial schematic capture and layout done in a few days rather than a week.

Possible in a day depending on risk tolerance, almost always better imo to sleep on it. There would be no iterations.

But they will not likely do it happily in that timeframe. And you would practically never get them to quote it at one day, especially not without an inflated rate.