Apple says it's using more recycled materials than ever before!
Apple products contained nearly 20 percent recycled content in 2021, the highest percentage the company has achieved to date. Apple shared new details about its recycling programs today, along with some new features it is offering customers ahead of Earth Day on April 22.
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The company also shared new ways customers can celebrate Earth Day, including supporting the World Wildlife Fund using Apple Pay. With educational resources, curated content and engaging activities across platforms, Apple customers can take advantage of opportunities to appreciate the beauty of nature wherever they are, learn about key issues like climate change and support causes and communities working to protect the planet.
For the first time in any Apple device, recycled gold was used in the plating of the main logic board on the iPhone 13 and iPhone 13 Pro, as well as in the wire in the front and rear cameras of the device. This “milestone,” Apple says, was the result of the company “leading the industry in traceability levels to create an supply chain .”
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This builds on the company’s previous efforts to recover gold from its own discarded products. When Apple’s recycling robots remove a metric ton of iPhone parts, the company says, they can recover enough used gold and copper to avoid mining 2,000 metric tons of rock. There can be up to 80 times more gold in a ton of cellphones than in a ton of material from a gold mine.
Apple also unveiled a new recycling machine today called Taz. Taz uses “shredder-like technology to separate magnets from audio units and recover more rare earth elements,” Apple said in its announcement today. And after a revamp, Daisy, a recycling robot Apple introduced in 2018, can now separate 23 iPhone models, the company said today. With their help, Apple says it was able to double its use of recycled tungsten, minerals , and cobalt in fiscal year 2021.
Apple hasn't been able to make much progress on its carbon-reduction plans, according to its recently released Environmental Progress Report. The company pledged in 2020 to reduce its warming emissions by 75 percent this decade. But in 2021, its gross emissions increased slightly.
The company has sought to reduce the impact of this increase in pollution through projects to offset or remove CO2 from the atmosphere, keeping its net emissions steady last year at 22.5 million metric tons of CO2 equivalent. Most of the company’s climate pollution comes from supply chains for securing materials and manufacturing products . So Apple has pushed hundreds of its suppliers to build its products using clean energy.
See also: Apple got its suppliers to use more renewable energy sources
To learn more about Daisy and Apple's environmental initiatives, consumers will be able to watch "a new immersive augmented reality experience" on Snapchat on Earth Day. And from now until April 22, Apple says it will donate one dollar to the environmental nonprofit World Wildlife Fund (WWF) with every purchase made using Apple Pay on apple.com, in the Apple Store app, or in an Apple Store.
Source of information: theverge.com
