Apple To Expand Recycling Programs
April 18 2019 - 9:16AM
Dow Jones News
By Michael Dabaie
Apple Inc. (AAPL) said it is expanding its recycling programs,
quadrupling the number of locations U.S. customers can send their
iPhones to be disassembled by the company's recycling robot, which
it calls Daisy.
Apple said the robot will disassemble and recycle select used
iPhones returned to Best Buy stores throughout the U.S. and KPN
retailers in the Netherlands. Customers also can turn in devices at
any Apple Store or through apple.com as part of the Apple Trade In
program.
The company has received nearly one million devices through
Apple programs and each Daisy can disassemble 1.2 million devices
per year, Apple said.
A robot is now able to disassemble 15 different iPhone models at
the rate of 200 per hour, Apple said. Once materials have been
recovered, they are recycled back into the manufacturing process.
For cobalt, which is a key battery material, Apple sends iPhone
batteries recovered upstream in its supply chain. They are then
combined with scrap from select manufacturing sites and, for the
first time, cobalt recovered through this process is now being used
to make new Apple batteries.
Apple said it is opening its Material Recovery Lab dedicated to
discovering future recycling processes. The new 9,000-square-foot
facility in Austin, Texas, will look for solutions involving
robotics and machine learning to improve on traditional methods
like targeted disassembly, sorting and shredding.
Write to Michael Dabaie at michael.dabaie@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
April 18, 2019 09:01 ET (13:01 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2019 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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