Apple has sued GEEP Canada, the company's recycling company, for allegedly stealing and reselling at least 103,845 iPhones, iPads and watches that it took in for disassembly. "At least 11,766 kilograms of our devices left GEEP's facility undamaged - a fact confirmed by GEEP itself," Apple says.
Apple sent more than 500,000 iPhones, iPads, and Apple Watches between January 2015 and December 2017. When Apple conducted an audit, it found that 18% of those devices still had access to the internet over cellular networks. That 18% doesn't account for Apple devices that can't be reached by a phone network, so it's possible that an even higher percentage of the gadgets were resold.
Apple is seeking at least $22.7 million from its former partner. GEEP denies all wrongdoing, but does not deny that there was theft. It has reportedly filed a lawsuit alleging that three of its employees stole the devices on their behalf. Apple disputes this, arguing that these employees are actually senior management at the recycling company.
Last year, gadget users left behind a record amount of waste, adding up to 53.6 million tons of phones, computers and other gadgets. Like other tech, Apple is trying to improve its environmental practices, including an effort to move recycling in-house with its own disassembly robots Daisy and Dave, which are designed to recover iPhone parts that can't be salvaged during traditional recycling.
However, the company still relies on other partners to recover valuable material from used devices, and from 2015 to 2018, GEEP Canada was one of them. Device reconditioning and resale was also part of GEEP’s business. While the company offered many e-waste management services during that time, it also explicitly stated on its website that its mission was to “encourage device reuse whenever possible.”.
From the tech giant's perspective, GEEP's resale of these devices was not desirable. Just because the products were able to be resold on the gray market doesn't mean they meet Apple's quality or safety standards. "Products sent for recycling are no longer fit for sale to consumers and if rebuilt with counterfeit parts, could cause serious safety issues, such as electrical or battery defects ," the company says.
Apple filed the complaint in January 2020, but has known about the thefts since they were discovered between 2017 and 2018. Apple has not worked with GEEP Canada again since then.
