Apple's Recycling Initiatives Recover $40 Million In Gold (macrumors.com)

An anonymous reader writes: Apple released its latest annual environmental report yesterday with numbers detailing how much the company has been able to recover from old devices. Business Insider notes that Apple was able to recover over 61 million pounds of steel, aluminum, glass, and other materials from its computers and iPhones. This includes a total of 2,204 pounds of gold worth $40 million at current prices ($1,229.80 per troy ounce of gold). Cult of Mac ran the figures quoted by Apple through today's metal prices, and came up with individual figures for copper ($6.4 million), aluminum ($3.2 million), silver ($1.6 million), nickel ($160,426), zinc ($109,503), and lead ($33,999). Last month, Apple unveiled an iPhone recycling robot, named Liam, that salvages old parts.

Comments

Re: Missing Detail: Cost of Extraction

[tlhIngan]

Right for the environment? What chemical processes do they use? What amount of toxic chemicals are used? How does it compare to not chopping the gadgets up so they can sell more new shinies?

It's actually far cheaper to extract precious metals and such from e-waste than to mine it from the earth. The reason is simple - e-waste has a higher concentration of the metals than raw ore. So it's far cheaper to extract from e-waste than it is pull it out of the ground. And since it's easier, it's also less damaging on the environment since less energy is used extracting the metals.

It's is generally the case too. If Apple's robot pre-sorts the mateirals you can get even higher extraction rates and less energy use overall.

Re:Missing Detail: Cost of Extraction

[zdzichu]

That's the cost of following the law, being nice to environment is a side effect. Apple, as a device manufacturer is under *obligation* to recycle their phones, as long as they want to sell them in 700+ million market called Europe.
Here is quick summary of ROHS 2002/95/EC and WEEE 2002/96/EC directives: https://lwn.net/Articles/68380...