Almost Nothing About the 'Apple Harvests Gold From iPhones' Story Is True (vice.com)

Jason Koebler, reporting for Motherboard: You may have seen a viral headline floating around over the last few days: Apple recycled $40 million worth of gold last year, which was extracted from iPhones. Almost none of what was reported is true. [...] Here is the truth: Apple paid independent recyclers to recycle old electronics -- which were almost never Apple products, by the way -- because it's required by law to do so. Far from banking $40 million on the prospect, Apple likely ended up taking an overall monetary loss. This is not because Apple is a bad actor or is hiding anything, it's simply how the industry works. All electronics manufacturers that sell products in the United States are required to do e-waste recycling under laws enacted in 25 states. The laws are different in each state, but none of them require Apple to recycle Apple products. Instead, they usually require manufacturers to recycle a certain amount of pounds of e-waste, which is linked to either their market share or to the overall weight of products they sell. That's why you see Apple noting that it recycled "71 percent of the total weight of products we sold seven years earlier."

Comments

Meh.

[kimvette]

I accidentally burned my Macbook Pro in the firepit in the backyard two years ago. I had tossed the wrong box in the fire (I had two boxes... one had cardboard in it, the other had my Macbook Pro and a couple of boxes in it and I mixed them up). My GF at the time asked me "is that your Macbook in there?"

oops.

Not a tear was shed though. I laughed about it - because I loathed the thing. Chicklet keyboard, much of the assembly glued together to make it as unrepairable and un-upgradable as possible (Apple is very likely THE least green tech company in existence) so I rarely used it, instead preferring my much older and very rugged (albeit heavy and ugly) Del Precision M6400.

At work I could have had a new Macbook Pro (with "Retina" display, yadda yadda yadda) or a Dell Latitude E6540. I picked the Dell. When I get an upgrade at work, I'll very likely choose the Dell over the Crapple again because I telecommute and in a pinch I can crack open the Dell and have it repaired in minutes, whereas with Apple I need to bake the thing to loosen the adhesive, pry it apart, perform a rain dance, pray to several gods, and hope that nothing warps or craps while disassembling it, and then reassemble it and wait for adhesives to cure. Thanks, but no thanks.

Apple is grossly irresponsible and the furthest they can get from being "green" as they can be - they've made huge efforts to tear the environment a new asshole.