On Earth Day 2024, Apple highlighted its progress in iPhone recycling, notably with advertisements touting the capabilities of its Daisy robot. And yet, a media investigation Bloomberg lifts the veil on a much less admissible reality, that of the massive and unnecessary destruction of tens of thousands of iPhones by Apple.
Sources interviewed at GEEP – an Apple subcontractor responsible for the end of life and recycling of iPhones – affirm that many iPhones in working condition, or with some minor defects, are destroyed every day so even though Apple has been boasting since 2020 of reusing “his first choice” in terms of environmental measures. The situation would also be the same for Macs, AirPods and the manufacturer’s connected watches.
According to Bloomberg, the thousands of phones handled every day by GEEP employees were even in good enough condition that the massive theft of devices destined for the black market gave rise to a lawsuit between Apple and GEEP. iPhone theft was not only carried out by the small hands of GEEP, a manager was also caught red-handed falsifying documents to slip a few pallets of iPhones under the radar of the company. ‘business.
For some, this massive destruction operation is more a matter of commercial strategy than a real desire for virtuous recycling. An engineer who worked in iPhone recycling plants sums it up simply: “Apple can’t sell a brand new phone for $1,000 if there are still two-year-old phones on the market. The more phones they get rid of, the more they can sell“.
According to a testimony collected by Bloomberg, Apple products would not be the only ones to go through crushers. From Bose headphones to flat screens and sex toys, GEEP was obliged to destroy a bunch of perfectly functional gadgets. “It was crazy“, details a former employee interviewed by Bloomberg “all these things work great, I don’t want to destroy them“. While the exact number of iPhones needlessly crushed is not known, according to a consultant who worked for Apple until 2023, the company would have the unfortunate tendency to transform perfectly functional iPhones into “metallic muesli“at a pace”even more important than the competition“. And if we could be pleased that Apple is at least thinking about recycling its phones, the reality is a little more complex.
Recycling is a solution”of last resort“
Recycling is an imperfect solution that consumes a lot of energy for results that are not always very convincing. As iFixit notes, 57% of materials from e-waste recycling are lost during the upcycling process. The use of alloys also greatly complicates recycling, which is often less profitable than the extraction of new materials. Despite all the great promises made by Apple and other mobile manufacturers who present ever more “sustainable“, the reality is that recycling meets 1% of global demand for rare earths. Not exactly the virtuous circle promised by the big electronics firms.
Even the robots Liam and Daisy presented with great fanfare by Apple are not capable of working fast enough to scour the stocks of electronic waste. The latest news is that Daisy is capable of processing 2 million phones per year, or approximately the volume that Apple sells… in 3 days.
“Recycling is the solution of last resort“, summarizes the CEO of Framework interviewed by Bloomberg. Let’s repeat, 75% of your phone’s carbon footprint is generated before it even gets into your hands, so the best way to reduce the digital carbon footprint is not to recycle, but to repair and reuse as long as possible. Crushing thousands of phones that could end up on the shelves of reconditioners or the workbenches of repairers of all kinds is therefore far from being an acceptable compromise for the planet.