Fortune USA – September 2019

78

FORTUNE.COM // SEPTEMBER 2019

The bugs that make us sick
are increasingly resistant to
the drugs we’ve used (and
misused) to fight them. By
one estimate, antimicrobial
resistance (AMR) will cause the
deaths of 10 million people an­
nually by 2050. BD’s products,
including its test to rapidly de­
tect drug­resistant tuberculo­
sis and its infection­prevention
equipment, are tools to combat
AMR. BD also trains health
workers to quickly and precisely
diagnose and treat infection.
In Uganda, with BD’s help,
turnaround time for a TB test
has fallen from three weeks to
three days, reducing chances
that a patient will go untreated
or be given the wrong drug.

People with neurological
differences from what’s seen
as the norm—including place­
ment on the autism spectrum,
Tourette’s syndrome, and dys­
lexia—fall under the umbrella
of neurodiversity. They’re often
excluded from the workforce —
but not at accounting and
consulting giant EY, a leader in
hiring and matching them with
meaningful roles. EY now has
five Neurodiversity Centers of
Excellence to facilitate these
staffers’ integration into the
firm: Together they serve 80
employees. EY is also part­
nering with universities and
nonprofits to recruit neuro­
diverse candidates who can fill
skills gaps on its teams.

In an unmarked building tucked away

in an industrial park in Austin, a

location so secret it doesn’t appear

on Apple Maps, one of Apple’s latest

technologies is hard at work. Inside

glass casing, automatic robotic arms

move left, right, up, down, and around a conveyor

belt with speed and precision. A couple of technicians

in blue lab coats, safety goggles, and gloves watch as

fog—created by the glassed-in chamber’s extreme cold,

which can drop to –112 degrees—billows around one

of the arms. Loud mechanical pounding breaks the

low hum of running machinery with a uniform thump,

thump, thump.

This complicated system, called Daisy, combines au-

tomation and a human touch to give Apple its coveted

result: scraps of pure plastic, metal, and glass from

otherwise-unusable iPhones. “We spend a lot of time in

the engineering, making sure our devices stay together,”

NO. 14

EY

Building on the
strengths of the
neurodiverse.
LONDON

NO. 15

BD

A frontline fighter
in the war against
microbes.
FRANKLIN LAKES, N.J.

Someday,

Your New

Phone

Could Be

Made From

Your Old

Phone

Apple

THE LIST 14– 16

Apple’s Daisy system can disassemble 15 different

iPhone models to harvest their recyclable parts.

16

NO.

A global electronics

giant tackles the

growing problem

of e-waste.

CUPERTINO, CALIF.

COURTESY OF APPLE INC.