> Which is a pretty bad program, reusing is always better than recycling. Apple will just scrap it into basic elements: metals, maybe lithium.
They have a refurbished program so they definitely don't just scrap devices you trade in. Maybe they even scrap some devices for parts. In the server space this is normal. HP would regularly send us refurbished replacement parts for repairs (this is also one of the reason why they want the replaced parts back).
For consumer devices? Very unlikely. Do you have a citation?
> has a trade-in recycling program
Just because you send something off to be recycled doesn't mean it actually ends up being recycled. It's much better off to not have to recycle in the first place at all (eg. by making your hardware easy to repair, which Apple is notoriously bad at).
> Apple rejects current industry best practices by forcing the recyclers it works with to shred iPhones and MacBooks so they cannot be repaired or reused—instead, they are turned into tiny shards of metal and glass.
> "Materials are manually and mechanically disassembled and shredded into commodity-sized fractions of metals, plastics, and glass," John Yeider, Apple's recycling program manager, wrote under a heading called "Takeback Program Report" in a 2013 report to Michigan Department of Environmental Quality. "All hard drives are shredded in confetti-sized pieces. The pieces are then sorted into commodities grade materials. After sorting, the materials are sold and used for production stock in new products. No reuse. No parts harvesting. No resale."
Recycling is not a good thing: it is an expensive and intensive industrial process. Recycling is a last resort: if you have to make new stuff then sure, recycle, but it's better to avoid making new stuff by (a) not needing stuff in the first place, and (b) maintaining and repairing old stuff for as long as possible. Whatever happened to “reduce” and “reuse”?
It sounds like that's exactly what Apple is doing though?
>> If your device isn’t eligible for credit, we’ll recycle it for free.
If they can, they will resell the device. But a 5+ year old phone with a busted screen and dead battery is just trash. There is nothing to do but recycle it.
Anyway, the best waste is the one that does not exist, recycling should be last resort since it's often far from perfect and costly too. So we should reduce the amount of things we need to recycle in the first place. As for computer parts, I cannot see how it can be efficient.
> Why would anything different happen to a "resold" than a "sold" device?
Did you miss the other possible scenarios I offered, or are you certain they cannot happen? (If so, then why?) Did you not understand the point that recycling 100% of the devices might outweigh some reuse plus some portion ending up as landfill? Do you believe that devices ending up in landfill is worse than devices being recycled?
Why are you assuming the same thing would happen to a device on resale, compared to first sale? Do you know who GEEP was selling them to, and what for? I would guess that statistically the second life is much shorter, especially for devices that Apple decided couldn't be resold by their refurb program. I don't know that for certain, and I won't insist on it because I don't like to make wild assumptions, but if you believe otherwise, I'd love to hear what evidence you've got.
> for the sole reason that money changed hands without Apple getting their cut.
This speculation doesn't stand up to a reality check. Apple already re-uses devices: they sell refurbs! The second life you're advocating already happens to all the devices they can, and they already make money doing that and it's better for the environment. Why are you assuming that Apple is recycling devices for financial reasons, when it costs them money to recycle, and it would net them more money to resell these devices if they could? Why are you assuming these devices even have a second life in them, when Apple already sells used devices?
> I am beyond tired of dealing with the pretzel-like contortions of reasoning you twist yourself into to believe continued use of a device is somehow more harmful than stripping it for parts
This makes it pretty clear that you haven't understood my questions. I have not claimed that recycling is better than re-use. In fact I believe re-use is better than recycling, environmentally speaking. So I think we agree on that. What I'm asking is why you're so certain that this specific case is one where Apple is doing the wrong thing environmentally. That's not clear to me at all. It seems very possible that recycling here is much more environmentally responsible than re-selling. It really depends on more specifics than we have at hand; it matters what the condition of the devices is, it matters who they're being sold to, it matters what they'll get used for, how long they'll last, and what happens after that. What do you know that I don't know? I haven't seen anything yet to convince me that your certainty is backed by any evidence.
> I'll take their environmentalism with a massive grain of salt.
Could you please identify computer brands that are better, and link to their environmental records? What are the actionable alternatives that are more environmentally friendly?
> It is such a shame that nowadays even these high priced devices are contributing to the enormous e-waste we are all piling up.
That's an excellent point. No tech product can be a "BIFL" (Buy It For Life) product, but it'd be nice if all companies were as good as Apple at making their products recyclable, and making recycling easy.
For a while now Apple has operated a recycling programme which allows users to take their unwanted devices into their store and recycle them (usually incentivised with a discount a replacement device).
(I don't buy the anecdotal "Nobody can recycle aluminium with glass pressed into it" line from the article.)
It's not a stretch to call it greenwashing when a replacement is marketed as a repair, no matter what else they do. Especially since a full replacement for battery drain inevitably leads into their recycling process - if they think that their recycling process is even better than replacing the battery, why lie?
> Apple pays recyclers for the manual labor required to recover materials, even though it significantly exceeds the value of the materials being recovered.
The criterion for recycling isn't whether it's profitable or not. Why would you get any recognition for profitably recycling?
> A majority of comments here seem to think that literally millions of units of electronics are being shredded wastefully, instead of more meaningfully re-used. Ok, great! This is HN! Where are the calls to start a company to leverage this near-infinite supply of valuable trash through economically productive re-use? Should be very profitable, right?
There are already companies doing it. TFA talks about iThings collected by Apple themselves whose recycling Apple outsourced to others under the condition that everything will be teared down to raw materials.
"Electronics recyclers are filled with heaps of broken iMacs and MacBooks, which due to economics and the requirements of certifications are most often scrapped rather than repaired or sold," John Bumstead, a refurbisher who sells MacBooks that he salvages and frankensteins together from broken ones that he gets from recyclers that don't work with Apple, told me.
In trying to source MacBooks to repair, Bumstead says he's been turned away countless times by recyclers who say they can't sell him Apple products.
So yeah, the question is not whether recycling itself is profitable or not. The problem is that Apple apparently has sufficient profit margins that to them recycling is less profitable than shredding the old iGadgets to raw materials and reforging them into the latest shiny. Especially if it's done in China where the resulting pollution doesn't affect them as much.
The comment ended with "recycling should be a last resort (after reuse). Apple is deliberately obstructive of that."
My disagreement is that for multiple reasons (build quality, longevity, and small number of popular SKUs), which are because of Apple, there is a much larger secondhand market than most tech products or even non-tech products in general. This also means I can more easily find replacement parts by buying things like your broken iPad on ebay/craigslist.
I also think it sucks Apple gets dinged for their Takeback program. I do have a problem with things that make the consumer feel good without actually materially improving anything and with situations where companies pressure cities to build half-hearted recycling programs when companies should accept more of a burden.
I have a young kid and their toys burn through batteries. My wife has battery recycling at work. After giving up nagging her to take them I remembered Best Buy has a prominent display for electronics recycling. After keeping used batteries in my car for a few weeks I finally stopped by one and found it explicitly did not accept alkaline batteries. I can't imagine the hoops needed to acceptably dispose of rechargeable headphones or laptops.
Sure, these programs make some people feel a little better about consuming these things, but after decades of this I haven't seen any of this consumer energy going to anything more productive. Often, it's the city/waste collection taking the burden instead of the company that produced it.
If it's usable, why would you recycle it? You can sell used devices. Apple even sells refurbished ones themselves. The only reason to actually recycle it is if it's broken, or so old that nobody wants it anymore.
The problem with taking stuff that's sent for recycling and harvesting it for parts instead is that's a huge quality issue. Usable devices should be re-used; if it's being recycled, there must be a reason. And unless you're going to do an exhaustive quality assurance pass on every single component of the device, you shouldn't be reselling it to other people. And doing a full quality assurance pass on every single component is not something that recyclers can really do. Apple doesn't want its users to end up with devices that have faulty parts, and the only real way to do that is to require the recyclers to actually destroy the devices instead of salvaging them.
Also, I find it really strange that the article expressly mentions that hard drives are shredded. Of course they're shredded! You don't want any risk at all of someone else recovering data off of those things. Plus the whole quality issue as mentioned above.
The scrap part is the worst of this. Nice single use laptops on 3 year turnover cycles? No thanks. Unless Apple is responsible for turning the left overs into usable objects and not diverted to e-waste.
In the article they outline a pretty decent way to overcome this through apple themselves which I'd be much happier with.
Highly-recyclable parts of glass and aluminum. The anecdote from the article aside, Apple operates a recycling program where you can simply bring in your old hardware (IIRC) for a discount on the new hardware.
They have a refurbished program so they definitely don't just scrap devices you trade in. Maybe they even scrap some devices for parts. In the server space this is normal. HP would regularly send us refurbished replacement parts for repairs (this is also one of the reason why they want the replaced parts back).
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