"So far, we’ve identified recycled alternatives for 24 different grades of plastic, allowing us to use an average of 38 percent recycled plastic across 82 components for products released this year."
I was already wondering how this applied to their recycled aluminum claim, but is there actually enough recycled aluminum / cobalt of sufficient quality to go in laptops in the world that it would be feasible to scale beyond just Apple? Is it just a matter of price, or has Apple - as with some components/materials - completely taken the option off the market?
In all of those examples you provided none of them meet the same criteria.
Apple's entire macbook line, both Air and Pro, have bodies made from
100% recycled aluminum.
The examples you provided, it's 50% recycled plastics or 75% recycled
aluminum or 80% over-all or if 100% recycled aluminum is used it's
only for some of their product lines.
Given all of that: I never said other companies aren't trying, and I'm
not dismissing their efforts. I just said they can't make the same
claim. Additionally, when it comes to recycling those plastic bodies
the infrastructure just isn't there like it is for aluminum.
> Every brand out there is greenwashing its name...
I'm glad they're doing it, even if it's just to improve their brand
image and not out of actual concern for the environment.
> I seriously believe it's time we start considering Apple a religion.
Aluminum is renewable. So is glass, of course. And no, Apple is actually doing all they can to keep old iPhones from being tossed in landfills, including designing custom robots to disassemble them so that the components can then at least theoretically be recycled.
You don't need to mine more aluminum if you're able to use recycled aluminum in your products. And Apple does.
So Apple is perhaps not the best choice of a company to pick on in this particular part of the argument.
Generally recycling aluminium is incredibly cheap, especially if it's just a solid block without the regular potential contaminants, although I don't know what specific alloy they're using. If it's something like 6061 then it's especially easy to recycle, afaik, because it's very low in silicon and iron.
Do you know of any large tech companies that have more environmental ethics? I'm not sure Apple is good about it, but sadly I don't know of any better.
Not disputing that apple doesn’t “use 100% recycled materials” now (that would be virtually impossible), but the plastic recycling figure is also not saying much about e-waste from iPhones either. How much plastic is even used making an iPhone? I would be surprised if it’s more than 10%. Recycling figures for aluminum, stainless steel, glass, battery chemicals, and the expensive metals such as gold and silver used in phones are probably close to 100%. If the ‘24 different grades of plastic’ include the materials used for the (tiny) PCB in an iPhone, not much is left that is not recycled.
On a side note, I would like to see some figures how much energy and materials are actually spent when replacing something like a phone, compared to things like driving to work each day, running the AC for 12+ hours a day, flying around the globe once or twice a year or eating meat and dairy products every day of the week. I would be surprised if it’s even remotely significant compared to these things (yes this is a cynical and not very constructive argument to make, but perfectly rational)
Notably, to me, they have recovered 4x as much steel as aluminum, suggesting to me that a significant part of their recycling operation is on non-Apple PCs and or quite old Apple equipment since the bulk of their current products (for in some cases 10 years) are composed of aluminum.
"But [Apple] has conspicuously not promised to collect all its recycled aluminum from its own dross..."
Apple's keynote says their recycled aluminum is a new special alloy. I know nothing of such things, but it occurs to me that recycled laptops would need different processing from say recycled aluminum cans.
"The design may well be comprised of “highly recyclable aluminum and glass” — but my friends in the electronics recycling industry tell me they have no way of recycling aluminum that has glass glued to it like Apple did with both this machine and the recent iPad."
I took this to mean that recycling was essentially impossible (by Apple or anyone else). Perhaps Apple can indeed figure out a recycling strategy. I doubt they will spend any time on it unless prompted by adverse publicity (like this article is generating).
I believe Apple tries to use mostly recyclable components. And they do have a fairly comprehensive set of recycling / trade-in programs around the globe: https://www.apple.com/recycling/nationalservices/
That being said, I haven’t read any third-party audits to know if this is more than Apple marketing. Would be curious if they live up to their own marketing.
> The MacBook Air is made with over 50 percent recycled content overall, a first for the company. This includes 100% recycled aluminum in the enclosure, 100% recycled tin in the solder and gold in the plating of multiple printed circuit boards, 100% recycled rare earth elements in all magnets (which is 99% of the rare earth elements in the device), 100% recycled cobalt in the MagSafe connector’s battery and magnets, 100% recycled copper in the main logic board (also a first), 90% recycled steel in the battery tray, keyboard feature plate, and trackpad beam plate, and 35% or more recycled plastic in other components.
> Additionally, over 25 percent of the electricity used to manufacture the device was sourced from supplier clean energy projects. And 100 percent of the wood fiber used in the packaging is recycled, as is 99 percent of the fiber-based plastic.
The question is what percentage of the material that enters their recycling program actually cycles back into new things, and how much carbon is burnt doing that.
I'm glad apple is exerting engineering resources to make their products recyclable and out of recycled materials - but I also can't ignore that linking the lifespan of the entire computer to the lifespan of the SSD is going to result in many unnecessarily discarded computers.
If 75% of the materials are recycled (generous, I couldn't find recent numbers but in 2010 they were recycling 28%) that means one landfilled mac for every 4 recycled. If a machine is killed by it's SSD, that's at LEAST a quarter of a mac in the landfill.
but my friends in the electronics recycling industry tell me they have no way of recycling aluminum that has glass glued to it like Apple did with both this machine and the recent iPad.
I took this to mean that recycling was essentially impossible (by Apple or anyone else).
Well, as you basically admit below, the economics and motivations of most recyclers are not going to be the same as Apple. In any case, this doesn't mean that they won't take any aluminum that has ever had glass glued to it. It just means that they won't take something with the glass still glued to it.
I'll bet you $1000 that I could get the screen glass off of a Retina Macbook Pro with a hammer and an angle grinder or another common shop tool. (You supply the Macbook.) Most anything I can do inconveniently and dangerously at a hackerspace with an ordinary shop tool could be done with greater safety and lower unit cost with an appropriate custom tool.
Perhaps Apple can indeed figure out a recycling strategy. I doubt they will spend any time on it unless prompted by adverse publicity (like this article is generating).
So you don't know, and neither does your source. All you have is supposition, for which you leave yourself an out.
https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2022/04/apple-expands-the-use...
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