Apple will start shipping repaired iPhone 12 units in environment-friendly packaging starting this week. Made from bleach-free paper certified by the Forest Stewardship Council, the new brown box will replace the white boxes used so far.
Apple promises to eliminate the use of plastic in its packaging by 2025.
For the first time, Apple is putting certified recycled gold in the iPhone. It’s part of the company’s increased use of recycled content across its products. Because of these efforts, nearly 20% of all material used in Apple products in 2021 was recycled, a new high point for the company.
“As people around the world join in celebrating Earth Day, we are making real progress in our work to address the climate crisis and to one day make our products without taking anything from the earth,” said Lisa Jackson, Apple’s vice president of environment, policy and social initiatives, in a press release Tuesday.
Apple also added a new shredderbot that rips apart audio modules to its robot recycling crew.
There’s an area where Android is much faster than any iPhone: losing value. A gadget trade-in service tracked the depreciation of Apple and Android handsets and found that after a year the iPhone had held on to far more of its resale value.
Liam, Apple’s robot that deconstructs iPhones to mine the valuable resources inside them, is certainly cool — but he’s still not the recycling machine we deserve (or need).
Just like any Apple product, Liam was designed to work well. But how much good does the robot, which took three years to develop and build, actually do?
If this whole computer and smartwatch thing doesn’t work out, Apple could have a prosperous future in iPhone recycling.
The company released its annual environmental report today, which covers 2015. While the whole thing is pretty interesting, we really started paying attention at the part where the company shared how much material its recycling initiative had recovered from collected iPhones, iPads, Apple Watches, and anything else people sent in.
Apple says it recovered over 61 million pounds of stuff, and at today’s prices, it’s worth well over $50 million.
