In its annual Environment Responsibility Report for the fiscal year 2015, Apple has stated that last year, it had recovered 2204 pounds of Gold worth $40 million from recycled iPhones, iPads and Macs. Apple’s recycling program generated 90 million pounds of electronic waste out of which 60 million were reusable materials. The amount of Gold recovered was very small, but as Gold is expensive, it was the most valuable material recovered.
In consumer electronics, Gold is used because it is an excellent conductor of electricity and is highly resistant to corrosion. Since Silver corrodes easily and Copper moves electrons too slowly for some of the most important computing tasks, Gold is best suited.
Apple also stated that it collected 23 million pounds of steel, 13 million pounds of plastic, 12 million pounds of glass, 4.5 million pounds of Aluminium, 3 million pounds of Copper and 6600 pounds of silver. The tech giant has been accelerating its recycling program and its recent 'Renew Program' lets users recycle Apple devices at any Apple store. The company states that it reuses most of the materials that it extracts from the recycled phones, and this eliminates the need to mine those metals and materials.
Recently Apple started using a new experimental line of robots called ‘Liam’, which takes apart 1.2 million phones a year. Liam prototypes are operating in California and Netherlands.
Watch Liam disassemble the iPhone in this cool video