Apple announces its major expansion of global recycling programs

Apple today announced a major expansion of its recycling programs, quadrupling the number of locations US customers can send their iPhone to be disassembled by Daisy, its recycling robot. Daisy is a recycling robot by Apple where it will disassemble and recycle select used iPhones. The robot will recycle the iPhones returned to Best Buy stores throughout the US and KPN retailers in the Netherlands. Daisy is capable of disassembling 15 different iPhone models at the rate of 200 per hour, recovering even more important materials for re-use. How does Recycling work at Apple? Once materials have been recovered from Daisy, they are recycled back into the manufacturing process. For cobalt, which is a key battery material, Apple sends iPhone batteries recovered by Daisy upstream in its supply chain. They are then combined with scrap from select manufacturing sites and, for the first time, cobalt recovered through this process is used to make brand new Apple batteries. The company’s engineering of an aluminum alloy made from 100 percent recycled aluminum allows the new MacBook Air and Mac mini to have nearly half the carbon footprint of earlier models. Apple also announced the opening of its Material Recovery Lab dedicated to discovering future recycling processes. The new 9,000-square-foot ...