SUSTAINABILITY
Traditionally, e-waste recycling consists of shredders crushing devices into a glass-plastic-metal mix, making it nearly impossible to recover trace amounts of rare earth elements. Apple’ s Material Recovery Lab in Austin was built to prove there is a better way.
“ Advanced recycling must become an important part of the electronics supply chain and Apple is pioneering a new path to help push our industry forward,” Lisa Jackson, Apple’ s VP of Environment, Policy and Social Initiatives, said at Daisy’ s launch.“ We work hard to design products that our customers can rely on for a long time. When it comes time to recycle them, we hope that the convenience and benefit of our programmes will encourage everyone to bring in their old devices.”
Daisy was introduced in 2018 as a successor to Apple’ s first robot, Liam, and can disassemble 23 different models of iPhone at a rate of 200 per hour. By carefully separating components rather than shredding them, Daisy recovers materials at a quality standard that traditional recyclers simply cannot match. The copper it extracts is pure enough to be sold directly back into the market and the cobalt from the batteries is sent upstream to be used in brand-new Apple batteries – a true‘ closed-loop’ for one of the planet’ s most scarce resources.
Apple’ s robot recycling crew While Daisy handles the heavy lifting, Dave and Taz are in charge of the more specialist work.