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Apple recovered 2,204 pounds of gold from broken iPhones last year
- Pada 11y agoOr 1000 kilograms for the rest of the world.
- chrisseaton 11y agoOr simply, one tonne. In fact I'd guess that the engineers, thinking in SI units, told the PR people that 'we recovered a tonne', rounding to that figure for them because it sounds neat. Then the PR people converted to pounds for older readers, which comes out as the very precise sounding 2,204. So the figure is probably rounded but then presented as being much more precise than it is.
- hudibras 11y agoBut since this gold, did they actually measure the weight in international troy ounces, then convert (correctly or otherwise) to avoirdupois pounds, then maybe another incorrect or correct conversion to kilograms and metric tonnes?
- Symbiote 11y agoThey probably picked the wrong archaic unit. Shouldn't it be measured in troy pounds?
- CydeWeys 11y agoI don't understand this whole "tonne" thing. Why overload a word that already has two other conflicting meanings (the imperial short ton and the imperial long ton) when you already have a word that is more canonical and completely unambiguous in "Megagram"? Plus it just sounds cool.
- cptskippy 11y agoBecause no one has any concept of that unit of measure. They use relatable units of measure, that's where the whole banana for scale thing came from because almost everyone has a grasp on the dimensions of a banana. People know cars weight tons and so a ton is a vastly more relatable unit of measure.
- DonHopkins 11y agoHow much does it weigh in football fields?
- rconti 11y agoIf you have a grasp on the dimensions of a banana, please make sure you've done so in the privacy of your own home.
- jessaustin 11y agoThere are few fruits that vary so much in size and shape as does the banana. Has anyone actually suggested using that as a standard for anything?
- DanBC 11y agoSome online communities use "banana for scale". Other communities talk about radiation risk in terms of radiotion you get from a banana. It's about as useful as double-decker buses or football fields.
- bitJericho 11y agoThe banana used for such measurements is your typical grocery store banana.
- DonHopkins 11y agoI hear well made bananas are also useful for terrorizing atheists. [1] Something about how they don't squirt in your face. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2z-OLG0KyR4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2z-OLG0KyR4
- dimfeld 11y agoSounds right to me. If you look at Apple's report[1], all the numbers they list for material recovery are exactly divisible by 2204. EDIT: Correction, all except for the number for recovered steel. [1] http://images.apple.com/environment/pdf/Apple_Environmental_Responsibility_Report_2016.pdf http://images.apple.com/environment/pdf/Apple_Environmental_...
- beachstartup 11y agoin the US it's called a metric ton.
- moron4hire 11y agohence one of my favorite phrases, to refer to things as a " metric shit-tonne".
- jessaustin 11y agoOMG CNN is the worst.
- yincrash 11y ago2204 / 90,000,000 (total e-waste) = 0.002% Also, the gold was not just from iPhones. Macs and iPads are included in that number. What a weird non-story. It would be interesting to know the cost of the recycling program to know if the materials recovered paid for the program.
- gtirloni 11y ago61 out 90 million pounds of e-waste were recyclable materials. I think that's a more interesting number.
- revelation 11y agoStep 1: design iPhones to be not repairable. Step 2: determine it costs too much to repair "broken" iPhones (see step 1). Step 3: Burn the whole lot down for precious metals. What an enormous win for the environment and recycling! There are plenty of companies that will already do step 3, but pretty much nobody other than Apple has the opportunity to do something about the vastly more important step 2.
- taspeotis 11y ago> Step 3: Burn the whole lot down for precious metals. It seems they have a deft touch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYshVbcEmUc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYshVbcEmUc
- basicplus2 11y agoyeah right... a snazzy looking robot my arse.. more like children in China and India sitting in squaller pulling them apart by hand, burning the plastic by hand and sniffing it to determine the plastic type.. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_phone_recycling https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_phone_recycling "Because the U.S has not ratified the Basel Convention or its Ban Amendment, and has no domestic laws forbidding the export of toxic waste, the Basel Action Network estimates that about 80% of the electronic waste directed to recycling in the U.S. does not get recycled there at all, but is put on container ships and sent to countries such as China.[6][7][8][9] Guiyu in the Shantou region of China, and Delhi and Bangalore in India, have electronic waste processing areas.[6][10][11]" http://edition.cnn.com/2013/05/30/world/asia/china-electronic-waste-e-waste/index.html http://edition.cnn.com/2013/05/30/world/asia/china-electroni...
- e12e 11y agoSpeaking of old articles, I came across this on iPhone (and other electronic) recycling from 2012: http://www.cnet.com/news/the-environmental-pitfalls-at-the-end-of-an-iphones-life/ http://www.cnet.com/news/the-environmental-pitfalls-at-the-e... Would be interesting to see a real follow-up, rather than just some PR-numbers from Apple.
- titzer 11y agoThat's about $40 million to save you a Google search.
- hudibras 11y agoOr a search of the second sentence in the article...
- azazqadir 11y agoStill had to search on Google to check how much $40M is in my currency.
- Esau 11y agoBut how much did it cost them to recover that $40 million is gold?
- jonnathanson 11y agoAs efficient and economically scaled as Apple's supply chain operations are, I'm guessing significantly less than $40 million.
- elwell 11y agoAlso, it's not as if gold is the only benefit produce from their recycling process.
- Fundlab 11y agoWhat parts of Apple's devices contain gold?
- rathish_g 11y agoWhat is your recovery plan?
- vdernov 11y agoPlenty of tutorials on YouTube using aqua regia. That's not the issue. The issue is having enough circuit boards on hand to make it worth it.
- shalmanese 11y agoHere's an example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhuwO8AjM7k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhuwO8AjM7k
- azazqadir 11y agoGold, silver or copper are used in electronic devices as a conductor. Your device should have one as well, whether in gold or silver, depends on the makers. But the quantity of the metal used might not be as much as you are thinking.
- gallerytungsten 11y agoGold is found on printed circuit boards and components, typically used to electroplate connectors, so that they won't fail due to corrosion.
- DonHopkins 11y agoI wish they made those tiny little round white stickers they have inside Apple products out of gold [1]. They keep getting wet and voiding my warranty. [1] http://www.ebay.com/itm/10x-Water-Damage-Warranty-Sensor-Indicator-Sticker-for-Apple-iPhone-3G-3GS-4-4G-/151115840004?hash=item232f34ba04:g:cHMAAOxydlFS8XuQ http://www.ebay.com/itm/10x-Water-Damage-Warranty-Sensor-Ind...
- baskind 11y agoWould be equally interesting to know how much it cost them to recover that much gold from that many devices.
- sfall 11y agoit is a profitable venture there are companies that recover precious metals from computer equipment
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- monochromatic 11y ago> Copper is super-cheap, but it moves electrons too slowly for some of the most important computing tasks. Just garbage reporting.
- yuubi 11y agoFor those who haven't had a physics class, that's garbage because silver is somewhat more conductive than copper, which is slightly more conductive than gold. The main benefit of gold is that it's more stable than copper, so it's a good material for connector contact surfaces, but the bulk of the contact should be something else like copper or steel, depending on the relative importance of electrical or mechanical properties.
- duaneb 11y agoAlso, electrons always move slowly in metal. It is the energy transfer that is meaningful.
- kyllo 11y agoBy more stable you mean it doesn't oxidize right?
- CapitalistCartr 11y agoYeah, gold is the best for contacts because, as you surmised, it stays clean of oxidation.
- fabulist 11y agoAdditionally, copper might be cheaper than gold or silver, but isn't very cheap.
- WizardlySquid 11y agoTheir tech journalists, the lowest of the low. I wouldn't trust these people to be able to push a mop.
- sanoli 11y agoI remember back when i did film photography, some people used to recover the silver from the solutions used to print onto paper (you know, from a negative).
- williesleg 11y agoThat's a lot of broken iPhones.
- ChuckMcM 11y agoThanks, in part, to LIAM[1] Something that we just started seeing in robotics at the beginning of 2015, dedicated disassembly robots. They should be able to replace much of the disassembly done in places like China or Ghana where containers of old electronics have been dumped. In terms of a project that helps the world I would totally invest in such robots. [1] (Warning its Mashable) http://mashable.com/2016/03/21/apple-liam-recycling-robot/#f8vMQz9f4qqR http://mashable.com/2016/03/21/apple-liam-recycling-robot/#f...
- em3rgent0rdr 11y agoTitle should include iPads and iMacs.
- powertower 11y agoThis is what 1 tonne (2204 LBS) of gold looks like - http://demonocracy.info/infographics/world/gold/images/demonocracy-gold-1_ton.jpg http://demonocracy.info/infographics/world/gold/images/demon...
- neilk 11y agoYeah, I did some calculating and surprisingly, 1 tonne of gold is somewhat smaller than a 2' cube. https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=1+tonne+of+gold+in+cubic+inches https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=1+tonne+of+gold+in+cub...
- tamana 11y agoClose to 1.3ft per side, or a 18" diameter sphere A gallon of gold is 75lbs, almost 10x as dense as water, and worth about $3million
- plorg 11y agoNotably, 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.
- mchahn 11y agoI knew of an assembly worker at HP Labs whose job including trimming off gold flash. It was a small amount but she threw it in her desk drawer. After a few years she sold the collection for a lot of money. She was caught and had to pay it back.
- db48x 11y agoIt's funny how these recycling stories always talk about gold, but the real money is in the chips.