Apple recovered 2,204 pounds of gold from broken iPhones last year

#1

Post by empressplay » Sat, Apr 16, 2016, 11:37 AM UTC

Apple recovered 2,204 pounds of gold from broken iPhones last year
money.cnn.com

Re: Apple recovered 2,204 pounds of gold from broken iPhones last year

#2

Post by Pada » Sat, Apr 16, 2016, 12:12 PM UTC

Or 1000 kilograms for the rest of the world.

Re: Apple recovered 2,204 pounds of gold from broken iPhones last year

#3

Post by yincrash » Sat, Apr 16, 2016, 12:27 PM UTC

2204 / 90,000,000 (total e-waste) = 0.002%

Also, the gold was not just from iPhones. Macs and iPads are included in that number. What a weird non-story. It would be interesting to know the cost of the recycling program to know if the materials recovered paid for the program.

Re: Apple recovered 2,204 pounds of gold from broken iPhones last year

#4

Post by chrisseaton » Sat, Apr 16, 2016, 12:45 PM UTC

Pada wrote: post #2

Or 1000 kilograms for the rest of the world.

Or simply, one tonne. In fact I'd guess that the engineers, thinking in SI units, told the PR people that 'we recovered a tonne', rounding to that figure for them because it sounds neat. Then the PR people converted to pounds for older readers, which comes out as the very precise sounding 2,204. So the figure is probably rounded but then presented as being much more precise than it is.

Re: Apple recovered 2,204 pounds of gold from broken iPhones last year

#5

Post by revelation » Sat, Apr 16, 2016, 12:49 PM UTC

Step 1: design iPhones to be not repairable.

Step 2: determine it costs too much to repair "broken" iPhones (see step 1).

Step 3: Burn the whole lot down for precious metals.

What an enormous win for the environment and recycling! There are plenty of companies that will already do step 3, but pretty much nobody other than Apple has the opportunity to do something about the vastly more important step 2.

Re: Apple recovered 2,204 pounds of gold from broken iPhones last year

#6

Post by taspeotis » Sat, Apr 16, 2016, 12:53 PM UTC

revelation wrote: post #5

Step 1: design iPhones to be not repairable. Step 2: determine it costs too much to repair "broken" iPhones (see step 1). Step 3: Burn the whole lot down for precious metals. What an enormous win for the environment and recycling! There are plenty of companies that will already do step 3, but pretty much nobody other than Apple has the opportunity to do something about the vastly more important step 2.