Apple turns to recycled gold, tin, and rare earth materials to go green

Over the years, Apple has significantly expanded its use of recycled materials and now sources two-thirds of all aluminum used from 100 percent recycled material. This is in line with the company’s 2030 goal of achieving carbon neutrality with every product.

Furthermore, the company aims to eliminate plastics from its product packaging by 2025 and is currently developing fiber alternatives that will replace packaging components such as screen films and foam cushioning.

This comes after developing a custom printer that will print directly onto the boxes of iPhone 14 and iPhone 14 Pro, a bid to phase out labels, among other innovations that helped avoid over 1,000 metric tons of plastic and over 2,400 metric tons of carbon dioxide.

But it's not only a shift to sustainable materials that Apple aims to achieve. The company is partnering with the Fund for Global Human Rights to support communities whose livelihoods depend on mining.

In 2022, Apple first used recycled copper foil in the main logic board of the 10th generation iPad, 100 percent recycled tungsten in the latest Apple Watch lineup, certified recycled steel in the battery tray of the MacBook Air with the M2 chip along with one fewer NAND flash storage chip – measures in line with its sustainability goal. Okay, maybe not the last one.

At its Material Recovery Lab in Austin, Texas, Apple engineers and experts rack their brains and come up with inventive ways to breathe new life into the materials in Apple products.

The company’s disassembly robot, Daisy, removes batteries from the iPhone and enables recyclers to recover Cobalt and Lithium. Apple estimates Daisy to have recovered more than 24,250 pounds (11,000 kilograms) of cobalt.

Another of its robots, Dave, is now deployed in China, where it helps accelerate the recovery of rare earth elements from Apple's Taptic Engines.

In this day and age where phones and tablets have become extensions of ourselves, these measures will surely ease guilt the next time an environment-friendly thought pops into our minds.

Perhaps the company could do a little more along these green lines: open up its repair policy and availability of spares that would resonate louder among customers and repair personnel, an opt-out option for charging cables shipped along with its phones rather than customers having to purchase them separately, and while they are at it, USB-C everything? One can dream.