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> Apple is using 100% recycled materials now "So far, we’ve identified recycled alternatives for 24 different grades of plastic, allowing us to use an average

• w0utert 7y ago
  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)