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FORTUNE.COM // SEPTEMBER 2019
into households worldwide through phones
alone, some of which will eventually become
waste if consumers lack a better option.
Daisy represents a “crucial step” toward Ap-
ple’s goals, says Jackson, who spent five years
leading the U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency before joining Apple. The robot, which
debuted last year, can disassemble 15 differ-
ent iPhone models (from the iPhone 5 up) at
a rate of 200 devices per hour. The machine
at the Austin lab and another in the Nether-
lands together are processing about 1 million
of the 9 million iPhones collected since April
through Apple’s trade-in program. (Most of
the others are refurbished and resold.)
Apple lists 14 materials used in its products
that it hopes to eventually fully recycle. One
is plastic, which takes hundreds of years to
decompose, poses a threat to wildlife, and can
release harmful toxins as it corrodes. Another
is lithium, found in rechargeable batteries, the
mining of which takes a heavy toll on the envi-
ronment. With help from Daisy, the company
has been able to recover all 14 elements for re-
cycling; it’s already reusing tin and aluminum
for new Apple products like the MacBook Air.
Traditional e-waste recycling facilities are
less dainty than Daisy. Most rely on bulky
machines to shred products, dumping the
output into bins of mixed particles. These
mixed streams are much harder to recycle,
and some elements get lost, stuck, or tossed
out in the process. Jackson says Apple wants
to improve not only its own processes but also
the broader industry’s mulch-it-all approach.
Part of its Austin facility is dedicated to
broad e-waste recycling R&D, with the hope
of developing innovations that will allow all
recycling facilities to recover more materials,
improving the consumer-tech supply chain.
It’s a long road that will require numerous
parts of the industry to get on board if Apple’s
goals are to be realized. Even Jackson says she
wasn’t initially convinced it was doable. But
after talking to engineers and team mem-
bers, she came to see total recycling as not
only possible but also vitally necessary. “If we
don’t spend time investing in making sure the
hardware is used for a long time and materials
are reused,” she says, “it will be a problem we
cannot surmount.” —Danielle Abrilsays Lisa Jackson, Apple’s vice president of en-
vironment, policy, and social initiatives. “Daisy
was about making sure we had an efficient and
effective way to disassemble products.”
Daisy represents not only a breakthrough
in electronic recycling efforts—robotically
pulling apart an electronic device piece by
piece—but also a road map to minimizing
environmental impact. Apple prides itself
on its green credentials; a high proportion
of its supply chain, for example, is powered
by renewable energy. Now it’s turning its
attention to an equally thorny problem: the
fast-growing, often toxic detritus of discarded
electronic gear.
Apple in 2017 announced a goal of eventu-
ally making all of its products from recycled
or renewable material—and eventually, only
such material. Apple can’t say when that will
happen. (It won’t be soon.) But this building,
the Materials Recovery Lab, which opened
in April, is where the company is doing the
research that it hopes will get it there.
Managing e-waste, a category that spans
thrown-away equipment from fax machines
to smartwatches, is becoming an increas-
ingly complex problem. In 2016 the world
generated 44 million metric tons of e-waste,
according to the Global E-Waste Monitor.
For perspective, that’s the equivalent of about
4,500 Eiffel Towers.
Household e-waste, including consumer
electronics, is a smaller share of the pile; last
year it accounted for 1.6 million metric tons,
or 3.5 billion pounds, according to the Goli-
sano Institute for Sustainability at Rochester
Institute of Technology. Total e-waste mass
is actually decreasing as companies release
sleeker, smaller products, says Callie Babbitt,
associate professor at the Golisano Institute.
But there’s a new problem on the rise, she
explains: “The products we’re using now are
relying on an increasingly complex mix of
rare-earth materials and precious metals.”
And as companies put out new products at
an increasingly rapid pace, even automated
systems may struggle to keep up.
Apple declines to estimate the size of its
own e-waste footprint. The company sold
217.7 million iPhones last year: At an average
of about five ounces a phone, that means Ap-
ple put about 68 million pounds of materials