Apple Environmental Responsibility Report

For every 100,000 iPhone 6
devices, Liam has the potential
to recover the following
materials:
Aluminum (1900 kg)
Copper (800 kg)
Gold (0.3 kg)
Platinum Group Metals (0.4 kg)
Silver (7 kg)
Tin (55 kg)
Rare Earth Elements (24 kg)
Cobalt (550 kg)
Tungsten (3.5 kg)
Tantalum (2.5 kg)
But sourcing isn’t enough—we want to recover as much tin as we’re using
and make sure it’s put back into the world’s supply. Unfortunately, tin is
not recovered by all electronics recyclers. So we are working to identify tin
recyclers and ensure that the material is being consistently recovered and
recycled from our products. To start, we are sending iPhone 6 main logic
boards recovered by Liam to a recycler who can reclaim the tin in addition
to the copper and precious metals. We are now looking for ways to do this
on a larger scale for tin—and apply what we’ve learned to other materials.
For example, we’re experimenting with ways to recover cobalt from our
lithium-ion batteries and use recycled cobalt.
Throughout this process, we’re learning a lot about how to create closedloop
supply chains. For some materials, sourcing recycled content will be
sufficient as long as we ensure the same amount is recovered, recycled,
and put back on the market. Where recycled content isn’t available at
the desired quality, we can drive improvements in recycling technologies
and a tighter closed loop—such as using material from old Apple devices
to build new ones. And when there are materials for which recycling
technologies don’t yet exist, we’ll need to invest in research and other
technology solutions.
Liam is a line of robots that
disassembles iPhone 6 into
individual components, making
it easier to recover finite
resources such as aluminum,
tungsten, and cobalt.
Environmental Responsibility Report | 2017 Progress Report, Covering FY2016
18