Apple: Sustainable smartphone?
Apple is quite proud of the fact that it has reached carbon neutrality for part of its operations, but it notes that it will take until 2030 for all of its products to be fully carbon neutral across its manufacturing infrastructure. The iPhone leans heavily on recycled materials. Of the materials in Apple's latest flagship, all rare earth, tungsten, tin, and, for the first time, gold components being used are 100% recycled. It's also using 35% recycled plastic in this year's design. Apple sees the full lifecycle of its products as being circular. Once an iPhone, or other Apple product for that matter, is no longer needed or wanted, Apple wants its users to return the device for recycling. To that end, it's created a component of the Apple Trade-In program that will divert older units to Daisy and Dave, the robots it specifically designed to disassemble iPhones into their component parts.