Apple requires refining technology

Waste sorting before shredding at ECS Refining in a suburb of Dallas. Photo: ECS Refining

Apple is positioning itself as a responsible company that cares about the environment and recycles parts. At the same time, the corporation is waging an uncompromising battle with third-party repair shops and private engineers who invade Apple's “food chain”. Unscrupulous entrepreneurs repair equipment, selecting Apple customers, making it difficult to sell new accessories, new smartphones and laptops. The company believes that only she has the right to repair her equipment. Only in the company center will the user receive the proper quality of service, whether he wants it or not.

Now it turned out that these two principles - a declaration on the protection of nature and control over their components for the sake of money - came into conflict. Money won.

Just two days ago, Apple released the Environmental Responsibility Report , a report on outstanding waste management and environmental efforts. The company has repeatedly distributed PR materials about what innovations it uses to do this. For example, it allegedly collects old iPhones and iPads, which are returned to stores, disassembled, smelted individual components and smelted about 30 milligrams of gold from each phone, which ultimately corresponds to 1 ton of gold. None of this article is true.

In another story, Apple talked aboutspecial robot Liam , which is able to parse 1.2 million iPhones per year. Also pure PR.

And the latest tale from Apple appeared just in the latest Environmental Responsibility Report. There, the company announced a plan to produce the iPhone completely from recycled materials such as aluminum, copper, tin and tungsten. However, this time the company honestly admitted that it had no idea how to implement such a plan: “We really did something that we rarely do: we announced the goal before we fully figured out how to achieve it,” said Lisa Jackson ( Lisa Jackson), Apple's vice president of environmental and social policy. Well, at least some piece of truth.

The reality is far from these marketing stories.

In reality, the vast majority of Apple's technology goes to recycling at other companies that specialize in recycling, and Apple pays them for it. She has to pay because the law obliges the company to recycle electronic garbage to the extent that it sells it. How much litter - so much and cleaned up after himself. Similar legislation applies in many other countries. In this case, it is not necessary to utilize your own smartphones, you can collect any electronics from other companies, the main thing is to observe the proportions in volume.

The editorial board of Motherboard upon request in accordance with the Law on Freedom of Information received documentsthat point to the true practices of recycling old Apple technology. They convincingly show that Apple expressly forbids contractors to use the most environmentally friendly recycling methods. Apple requires technology to be completely ground . In no case should you remove individual components, warns Apple. “No reuse. No resale, ”the report said for the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality.



Documents from Missouri, North Carolina, Illinois, Maryland, Oklahoma, Washington, Michigan and Wisconsin say the same thing - everywhere Apple requires processing companies to grind equipment, not allowing them to save electronic garbage, and even more so to reuse some separate parts.

From the documents it follows that Apple is working with three national waste recycling companies in the United States - SIMS Recycling Solutions, ECS Refining and Metech Recycling. In addition, Apple has contracts with Dynamic Recycling and Advanced Technology Recycling for the collection of electronic waste for further processing by other companies. A separate agreement with Call2recycle to recycle old batteries that Apple collects in its branded stores. Since all these firms operate under a contract with Apple, the latter may set them conditions for processing conditions.

Even when Apple phones go to the trash, Apple retains control over them. And not just over their phones. We emphasize once again that these draconian recycling rules apply not only to Apple technology, but to all the garbage collected by its order in accordance with the obligations for the disposal of electronics. For example, here's what is compiled for Apple in Illinois.



By weight there are most TVs, printers, monitors and computers. All this should be crushed into crumbs, it is forbidden to get components. Workers at the factory manually destroy expensive “retins,” which cost hundreds of dollars even in broken condition .



Such a hypocritical concern for the environment - only in words and in press releases.

Similar policies are with other manufacturers. In words, they care about nature, but in reality they think only about profit.