What Does Apple Do With Old iPhones?

Earlier this year apple announced the number of active in-use i-phones has risen to over a billion for the first time. It is pretty cool until you remember one day, they'll all need disposing of so today we're going to figure out what does apple do with old i-phones.

Apple Inc. Logo

In 2013 it dawned on apple that it had a problem having adroitly dropped a glossy new i-phone every. Couple of years since 2007 most folks in developed nations at least had an i-phone if they wanted one. The i-phones, these folks had moreover worked just fine and unless something went seriously wrong they often didn't feel like upgrading. Faced with its first dip in profits for some years apple decided to offer a trade-in option this meant and still means consumers can bring their old i-phone back to the apple store and receive store credit against the price of a younger sleeker model, if the returned phone happens to be in good condition apple slips the consumer a voucher before whisking their old device away to a refurbishment center, from there the device will be repackaged and resold typically to vendors in emerging markets like India or Africa. That's a stroke of genius on apple's part why? Because apple is quite literally selling the same device twice to be clear that's only if the i-phone is still in saleable condition.

If the device isn't in such good shape the customer gets nothing and the phone gets recycled how with a little help from Daisy The Robot, capable of deftly dismantling 200 phones an hour. Across 15 distinct i-phone models Daisy The Robot lives and works in a nondescript building on the outskirts of Austin Texas Daisy is so sustainable, she's actually manufactured from the recycled components of a previous dismantling droid named Liam daisy's robotic arm, is capable of extracting as much gold from one ton of i-phones as a regular miner would get from 150 tons of ore.

Other useful materials recovered by recycling in this way include precious cobalt from the battery copper from the camera and silver and platinum from the main logic board. Apple could be more sustainable, still reselling intact components like cameras and screens for non-mobile applications such as those touch screens in New York taxis. However the brand conscious Cupertino giant can't stomach the idea of a black market appearing in bootleg or counterfeit devices cobbled together from old apple components. All apple components are thus shredded their logos meticulously removed once all valuable metals are extracted the hazardous waste is shipped to specialist facilities like the Li Tong plant in yang men china. Any remaining usable material is reincarnated as aluminum for stuff like furniture or indeed as the shell of the new gen MacBook air.

Obviously not every i-phone around the world can be shipped to Austin for a date with daisy so the process is licensed and subcontracted out around the world to firms like Li Tong in Hong Kong. Li Tong specializes in so-called post-industrial recovery and post-consumer recycling basically clearing up that which is very tricky to clear up so apple does its best to extract value from your old i-phone whether by selling it to a less fussy third party or recycling its precious resources back into raw materials for new products what do you think is apple doing enough to compensate for the environmental impact of its FOMO inducing hardware.