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Apple will use 100 percent recycled cobalt in batteries by 2025
- gumballindie 4y agoBy that time they would sold, and thus damaged the environment, so many phones that they can just recycle them and still turn a good profit.
- easeout 4y agoEnvironmental impact is one of the few kinds of news they announce while it's still a plan and not yet an accomplishment.
- easeout 4y agoI'm not sure why this is a disliked post? Wouldn't mind a clue. I'm referring to the way they usually announce products right before they go up for sale, or announce software changes right before beta.
- CatWChainsaw 4y agoEcologically, our high-tech civilization is not sustainable, so this is feel-good designed to market complacency and keep the good times rolling while it's possible. People don't like being reminded of that, hence downvotes.
- wuming2 4y agoWith 70% of revenues from hundred million battery powered devices a year is a big deal.
- mocko 4y agoWell, hmm - is it? I'd naively imagine cobalt content is proportional to battery size, and while Apple sells a lot of devices they aren't large energy-hungry ones. Surely far more of the world's battery production (by watt-hours or kg, take your pick) goes into cars and grid storage than iPhones?
- bayindirh 4y agoWhen run at full-steam, MacBooks, iPads and iPhones can churn significant amount of data for their sizes, and use significant amount of energy. The batteries sold by Apple are pretty dense for their sizes, and they sell a lot of them. It will definitely add up.
- mocko 4y agoSure, I'm not hating on Apple - it's a perfectly reasonable thing for them to do. But I'd question how much of global cobalt production was ever going into macbooks/iphones rather than electric cars, lawnmowers, hoovers and whatever else. This sets a good precedent but we'd need other manufacturers (who I'd guess are more cost-conscious) to follow suit before it changes much.
- lockhouse 4y agoApparently an iPhone uses about 8 grams of cobalt. Considering how many units are shipped annually, that adds up to quite a lot actually.
- alfor 4y agoThe applications that don’t need the highest energy density are shifting away from cobalt.
- ben_w 4y agoHmm… > 232 million iPhones, 61 million iPads and 26 million Mac and MacBook… - (last year) https://www.businessofapps.com/data/apple-statistics/ https://www.businessofapps.com/data/apple-statistics/ I'll assume the batteries are 8 Wh for iPhone, 30 Wh for iPad, 52 Wh for the Macs[0]: = (232 * 8) + (61 * 30) + (26 * 52) = 5038 MWh = 5 GWh Which is more than I was expecting, but at the same time Tesla is on track for 1.8 million cars this year at a minimum of 54 kWh each = 97.2 GWh So, yeah; good on Apple, more of this please from other electronics companies, still tiny compared to automotive. [0] plausible guesses only because I don't have a breakdown of sales by model and I don't care enough to go looking
- 4y ago
- detourdog 4y agoEfficiency is always a big deal and at Apple's scale any slice of a percent is great. The supply chain for these materials seems to have predominately shifted to an internal resource as opposed to an external cost variable. This process also started small and slow but is starting to snowball. Apple has developed a supply chain that is efficient and still gaining efficiencies. Not to mention all the social and environmental issues.
- whitepaint 4y ago[flagged]
- bb123 4y agoRealistically what would Apple have to do here to satisfy you?
- retrac98 4y agoThis is a brilliant response.
- whitepaint 4y agoNo idea. But I am also no better than them, I use the products, don't I.
- Mashimo 4y agoWhat makes you think slave labor stops in 2 years?
- known 4y agoLithium car battery weighs 450kg. It has about 11 kg of lithium, 14 kg of cobalt, 27 kg of nickel, more than 40 kg of copper, and 50 kg of graphite as well as about 181 kg of steel, aluminum, and plastics.
- HPsquared 4y agoLFP batteries are becoming much more common in EVs, mostly due to lower cost. They are a bit lower performance than NMC and NCA cells, but cheaper - and they don't use cobalt. EDIT: for example Tesla Model 3 Standard Range uses LFP chemistry.
- alwayslikethis 4y agoThey are also notably much safer, at a cost of much worse energy density.
- steve_adams_86 4y agoAs I recall they can also last many more cycles than other lithium or lead acid batteries.
- AdrianB1 4y agoTrue, but lead acid is not even in the same league - deep discharge will kill it like flies.
- jillesvangurp 4y agoThere are also some sodium ion batteries on the road now. Their performance isn't stellar but it keeps cost down. LFP is indeed getting more popular. A lot of the more advanced chemistries also don't use cobalt, or use less of it. Cobalt sourcing is of course an issue. But it's worth noting that it's usage is not unique to just lithium batteries. A lot of cobalt is consumed and not recycled in the oil industry and it's used in a variety of other industries as well. Why is it that child labor is only ever an issue in the context of batteries? And another point is that of course not all cobalt mines are operated by child labor. Sourcing responsibly is an option if you need cobalt. You might have to pay extra for it. And another point is that cobalt isn't by far the only thing that is commonly sourced in ways that perhaps aren't that nice. There's a wide variety of minerals, oil, etc. that are also produced under circumstances that you might rightfully criticize for being similarly inhumane, dirty, etc. And a lot of that finds its ways into global supply chains. There's a bit of selection bias going on here. When it's batteries it's an outrage. When it's fuel you buy at the pump, you don't give it a second thought. Was it maybe some Nigerian oil or did it come from Iran, Russia, or some Canadian tar field? Did they use some Cobalt from the Congo to refine it? Most people neither know nor care. The point isn't whether there is or isn't child labor involved but that mostly people don't care enough to bother finding out.
- insane_dreamer 4y ago[flagged]
- outside1234 4y agoApple has a return program that could be one source - glad to hear that this isn't just thrown out in China! https://www.apple.com/recycling/nationalservices/ https://www.apple.com/recycling/nationalservices/
- insane_dreamer 4y agoYeah, but once they go 100% renewable they'll need to source from elsewhere.
- phire 4y agoI found one page that suggested 65% of recycled cobalt came from recycled batteries. Most of the rest came from heavy metals.
- ho_schi 4y agoI think the title should say „Apple will order from 2025 only batteries with 100 percent recycled cobalt“? I’m not aware that Apple has noteworthy production facilities. Other than IBM, Dell, Lenovo, TSMC, Intel, Samsung. With Samsung as exception, which produces literally everything.
- coldtea 4y agoWell, title doesn't say "make", says "use". Then again, if we're to talk about hypocrisy, the cobalt impact on environment (not to mention child, including slave-slave, labor) is downplayed towards token "green" PR. (And "recycled" cobalt can just be any previous cycle's "new" cobalt, meaning still driving cobalt mining forever - it's just an accounting trick to make it appear less impactful. Except if they promise to only use cobalt mined before 2025 in perpetuity).
- brookst 4y agoHow is it an accounting trick? Are you saying there would be no change in the amount of cobalt mined annually if Apple instead said they would use only newly mined cobalt?
- robocat 4y agoLet’s say the world currently uses 90% virgin Cobalt, and 10% recycled Cobalt. Let’s assume Apple decides to only use recycled Cobalt. Q1: Is there any change to the amount of recycled Cobalt? Q2: Is Apple a kind, environmentally-friendly, generous, caring corporation? Q3: If Apple decided to use batteries without Cobalt, would that decrease Cobalt mining? Q4: Could Apple reduce the number of phones they produce (decreasing Cobalt usage), and would Apple do that for environmental reasons? Q5: Let’s assume their new policy actually makes zero difference to the amount of Cobalt mining: would Apple still claim to be environmentally conscious in their marketing?
- coldtea 4y agoAlso, will Apple even continue to use "100% recycle cobalt" if their production grows in some market segment (say the "Apple car" eventually arrives) and their cobalt needs increase beyond that? Not a chance.
- ihucos 4y ago[flagged]
- devoutsalsa 4y agoIf you want to be edgy, switch from a carbon based to silicon based diet. Personally I just gnaw on my iPbone.
- samwillis 4y agoYou're not a publicly traded company making "forward looking statements" about 18 months out.
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago> not a publicly traded company making "forward looking statements" about 18 mounts out Moreover one that successfully launched a decades-long product plan in M1. If long-term planning is fundamentally shocking to you, it might say more about you than whatever you’re criticising.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- Maursault 4y agoWhat exactly is the battery chemistry of the batteries Apple is using? LiCo?!? LiNiMnCoO2? LiNiCoAlO2? I can't find the answer anywhere other than "Lithium ion."
- HPsquared 4y agoI don't know the answer, but probably NCA or NMC. Won't be LFP.
- Maursault 4y agoThat really settles it. We shouldn't have to guess. It should be known, within the first couple search results. What's the point of not revealing that?
- HPsquared 4y agoDraws attention to the cobalt content, I guess. What benefit is there to Apple in publishing this information?
- Maursault 4y ago> What benefit is there to Apple in publishing this information? Precisely the same benefit brought from honesty, transparency and full disclosure, and whatever benefit there is in instilling faith and trust in a company that does not hide or obfuscate details of critical importance to the safety of their customers.
- ThrowawayTestr 4y agoFun fact: cobalt is an essential mineral, it's used in vitamin B12!
- steve_adams_86 4y agoRelated fun fact: the two types of B12 you typically find in stores are cyanocobalamin and methylcobalamin. Cobalt is practically in the names!
- Danieru 4y agoThis is rather brilliant as an announcement. Cobalt was/is the most conflict associated of the battery inputs. Thus R&D has pushed cobalt content lower and lower over the years. The net result is old batteries contain tons more cobalt by weight than these new batteries Apple is expecting to use in 2025. Of course I feel remiss not to point out how Apple is the party responsible for killing the user replaceable battery.
- azinman2 4y agoIf Apple hadn’t existed, do you think smartphones would all have user replaceable batteries now?
- lancesells 4y agoIt might have been slower. They seem to introduce these types of things first (maybe second) and then the industry follows.
- danaris 4y agoIf Apple hadn't existed, "smartphones" wouldn't look remotely like they do now. That's not to say that there wouldn't be some that have the general form factor of today's iPhone, but without the iPhone as a runaway success to copy, the rest of the market would not have standardized on that form factor to nearly this degree.
- jl6 4y agoUser-replaceable batteries create a waste stream of “used” batteries. I wonder what the recycling rate of those used batteries is, compared to the recycling rate of iPhones and their embedded batteries? Gut feel here says way lower. If true, killing the user-replaceable battery might be a net win for reducing consumption of problematic materials.
- CorrectHorseBat 4y agoMy gut says it's higher since I would expect people who care about replacing batteries also care about recycling the old ones. Why do you think it's way lower?
- endisneigh 4y agoNext thing Apple needs to do is setup MagSafe batteries to act as the primary battery for iPhones. Right now using a magsafe battery charges the built in battery which is then drained by iPhone usage. Ideally what would happen instead is iPhone usage would use the magsafe battery first, then the built in battery. The result of this is that magsafe batteries effectively are equivalent as replaceable ones.
- vlovich123 4y agoI’m confused. Isn’t that what happens? Some portion goes to operating the phone and the rest to charging the battery? How does it work differently? It doesn’t hook into the same charging system the phone uses for normal? Is that special for MagSafe? I don’t really understand how it’s different and can’t find anything online to read more about this.
- endisneigh 4y agoTo my knowledge if you had a dead battery, and used magsafe you still wouldn't be able to use your phone.
- vlovich123 4y agoCorrect, just like with a power cable. The phone needs to have some charge for basic operational safety. e.g. what happens if the user suddenly unplugs. Or are you saying MagSafe can't charge a dead phone?
- ezfe 4y agoI don't think the current setup is notably different from what you're proposing. The phone does use the MagSafe battery first, it just uses it through the internal battery, but that is just a matter of semantics. It shouldn't have a notable impact on battery health.
- nerdponx 4y ago> It shouldn't have a notable impact on battery health. Is that actually true? Lithium batteries seem kind of fussy.
- RaoulP 4y agoI find this section on the elimination of plastic from their packaging interesting as well: > The development of fiber alternatives for packaging components like screen films, wraps, and foam cushioning has kept Apple on track toward this ambitious goal. To address the remaining 4 percent plastic in the company’s packaging footprint, Apple is innovating to replace labels, lamination, and other small uses. In the last year, Apple developed a custom printer to introduce digital printing directly onto the boxes of iPhone 14 and iPhone 14 Pro, eliminating the need for most labels. And a new overprint varnish found in iPad Air, iPad Pro, and Apple Watch Series 8 packaging replaces the polypropylene plastic lamination found on boxes and packaging components.
- alberth 4y agoMost people don’t realize how much machinery Apple creates for their vendors to use.
- DrThunder 4y agoMaybe stop making a throw away phone first if you're actually interested in being "green".
- rcme 4y agoApple has best-in-class device support and lifespan, no?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- iameli 4y agoI'm sympathetic to waterproofing concerns about easily-swappable batteries but this is definitely why Right-to-Repair is incredibly important
- morkalork 4y agoI understand why it wasn't feasible before with the rate of progress but now it should be possible. I want to see a LTS type of phone. Something like 10 years. Any other appliance, car, power tool etc. have much much longer useful lives.
- tacynicaltake9 4y agoHere is a cynical take: Cobalt shortage. "Battery technology and recycling alone will not save the electric mobility transition from future cobalt shortages" https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-29022-z https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-29022-z Nothing drives a corporation to recycle and reuse more than the shortage of raw materials.
- why_only_15 4y agowhy is this bad? if there's a shortage it sounds actively good because that means more cobalt for other people.
- tacynicaltake9 4y agoCynical take: Greenwashing. They don't mention cobalt shortage at all. Making it sound like the environment is their primary goal.
- bilbo0s 4y agoMeh. None of this matters really. If I get someone to do the right thing, for the wrong reasons, then score one for me!
- froggertoaster 4y ago"Greenwashing" - never heard that term. Gonna use that one!
- troymc 4y agoI looked it up in the Oxford English Dictionary (via my local public library). greenwash verb, transitive. (a) To mislead (the public) or counter (public or media concerns) by falsely representing a person, company, product, etc., as being environmentally responsible; (b) to misrepresent (a company, its operations, etc.) as environmentally responsible. The earliest source the OED found was in 1989, in The Daily Telegraph (London).
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- JanneVee 4y agoSo I'll just leave this, it seems that people aren't aware of it: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250284297/cobaltred https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250284297/cobaltred
- mdp2021 4y agoWell, in this page a member shows that copper is used three time as much as cobalt in car batteries, and only a few days ago a documentary emerged about the copper extraction industry in Chile as a barricaded enclave causing high human costs. And even more recently the moves in the geopolitical game made the extraction of rare earths and its environmental (and social, etc.) costs a renewedly current topic. I am not sure that cobalt has a specially bad place in the whole context of extraction. (Apart from the non irrelevant fact that 'cobalt' comes from "kobold", because its ore is toxic.)
- mdp2021 4y ago...Someboy passed by, he had a working mouse and a broken keyboard. Elaborate.
- Wingman4l7 4y agoMore greenwashing garbage from Apple, a company that has been building devices with notoriously and deliberately poor repairability for years, and more recently, has been taking a giant shit on first-sale doctrine by refusing to provide any way for the new *legal* owners of decommissioned corporate hardware to de-list said hardware from MDM (org. device management), leading to entire laptops becoming soft-bricked e-waste well before the end of their reasonable lifespan.
- kitsunesoba 4y agoFrom what I’ve read, Apple can and has worked with third parties to unlock MDM-associated and activation locked devices, but only after a certain period of time and reasonable proof of legitimate ownership to try to avoid creating a pipeline to “legitimize” stolen hardware, which doesn’t seem particularly unreasonable. There’s no point in having a locking feature if they’ll roll over and unlock it for just anybody.
- Wingman4l7 4y ago"Reasonable proof of legitimate ownership" translates to "record of first-sale purchase directly from Apple" only, from every example I have seen. They have steadfastly refused to differentiate between the concepts of abandoned/donated devices vs. stolen ones -- very convenient for them, as it drives more sales of new devices and increasingly hamstrings the used market.
- kitsunesoba 4y ago> They have steadfastly refused to differentiate between the concepts of abandoned/donated devices vs. stolen ones This is a valid complaint, but at the same time that differentiation can be messy and difficult to systematize in a way that's not enabling thieves. Something I've advocated for in the past is a feature in the firmware that allows new owners to request an unlock from the original owner, which could be as simple as an email and/or SMS that the original owner can answer yes/no. This isn't a perfect fix, but it takes Apple out of the loop outside of acting as a relay, and if the original owner in fact abandoned or donated the device in question they'll have no qualms with unlocking it for the new owner.
- aziaziazi 4y agoNice move. Let’s not forget their cobalt supply chain was involved in child labor in DRC [0] 4 years ago. Hope the next dozens of precious ressources will follow soon, starting with lithium. [0] https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2019/dec/16/apple-and-google-named-in-us-lawsuit-over-congolese-child-cobalt-mining-deaths https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2019/dec/16/a... Edit:typo
- hammock 4y agoStill is. You cannot get cobalt from Congo without child slavery, and 3/4 of all cobalt comes from Congo. No matter what the phone and car companies tell you
- paulkrush 4y agoThey can do this as their percent of world total use of these products shrinks and as the market has maturing waste streams.
- AnonMO 4y agobased on recent shipment data from q4 2022 their global market share actually increased it actually bounced of the lows in 2020 and is still trending upwards and is at 10 year highs. >https://www.counterpointresearch.com/apple-iphone-market-share-quarter/ https://www.counterpointresearch.com/apple-iphone-market-sha... >https://www.counterpointresearch.com/global-smartphone-share/ https://www.counterpointresearch.com/global-smartphone-share...
- philistine 4y agoThe common complaints against Apple in this thread are echoed, but no one is criticizing Apple while being pragmatic. Everybody is dogmatic. Apple will not provide user replaceable batteries. That’s clear. It’s probably too expensive and complicated for them to do that and have waterproof devices. They instead offer replacements, and third-party shops know how to replace batteries too. With the airpods, Apple needs to be roasted endlessly for creating time-bomb trash though. But staying realistic, Apple massively improved the repair ability with the iPhone 14 by sandwiching the phone instead of fitting it on the back plate. They also improved the repairability of their laptops recently. The worst excesses of Apple’s poor internal design seems to be behind us.
- jollyllama 4y agoThere are phones targeted at construction and emergency workers that manage waterproofing and removable batteries, they just have the opposite form and aesthetic of the iPhone.
- alpaca128 4y agoDid people already forget that Samsung made their flagship phones waterproof back when they still had removable batteries, headphone jacks and SD card slots? And looking at Tim Cook's favorite metric - just 0.2mm thicker than the current iPhone. Not long ago we heard the same PR garbage about glue and solder being necessary for slim laptops but somehow the Framework isn't that much of a brick either.
- jollyllama 4y agoGood points. They're now running commercials ridiculing people with S5s to get them to trade them in.
- scarface74 4y agowaterproof as long as you have the battery door really secure and the data port cover on?
- 4y ago
- _cenw 4y agoI 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?
- fortran77 4y agoThink of all the extra money they can make replacing batteries more frequently!
- txsoftwaredev 4y agoRecycling cobalt batteries can have environmental impacts if not done properly. The process can result in the emission of pollutants, including greenhouse gases, toxic metals, and hazardous waste. Improper disposal of the waste generated during recycling can also have harmful effects on the environment. Not to mention recycling cobalt batteries requires a significant amount of energy. The process of recovering cobalt from batteries involves crushing, shredding, and melting the battery components, which can consume a lot of energy and contribute to carbon emissions.
- 2bitencryption 4y agoWhat's "100 percent recycled cobalt"? The cobalt is either recycled (100%), or it's not (0%). How much of this "100% recycled cobalt" makes up a single battery? Is it 10%? 1%? 99%? Is the battery 10% made of 100% recycled cobalt, and 90% made of non-recycled material? I hate this "100% recycled" wordplay. Any reasonable person would interpret it to mean "the batteries are 100% recycled" which seems to not be the case, given how sly they are being with the description. Still, kudos to the recycling effort, but don't try to trick me. It's the same trick nearly every company in the US plays with "made from 100% reclaimed ocean plastic." Sure, it is made from plastic that 100% was reclaimed from the ocean. But if that plastic only makes up 1% of the item, and the rest is 99% non-recycled plastic, then you're effectively just tricking any individual not paying attention.
- ye-olde-sysrq 4y agoIt seems to read reasonably unambiguously to me, I think. I interpreted it to mean: Of the cobalt that is used in making the batteries, all of it came from sources that had previously been used in something else, subsequent to it having been mined originally. None of it came from cobalt where it was mined and then this is its first use in a product. And then there being no other claims about the recycled-ness or lack thereof about the rest of the battery.
- geewee 4y agoReally? I feel like the interpretation is pretty obvious, that all of the cobalt in the batteries is recycled - but no promises or indicators about how much of the battery consists of cobalt. It doesn't feel like trickery to me, but it certainly doesn't paint the full picture.
- dpkonofa 4y agoIs English your first language? This is pretty clear to mean that 100% of the cobalt used in the production is recycled and not sourced from outside their supply. If their production used some recycled cobalt and that filled in gaps using sourced cobalt, then that wouldn't be 100% recycled.
- Someone 4y ago
- neom 4y agoI like buying supply chain stocks, I went to find out who apple is buying cobalt from and apparently it's mostly directly from the miners, pretty cool!
- abhayhegde 4y agoApple claims carbon neutral since 2020, while its global chain are set to be decarbonized by 2030. This measure seems to be a huge boost, especially considering the cobalt supply chain was quite a significant contributor to the antithesis.
- bobse 4y agoThey won't. Sage.
- fsckboy 4y agoThis entire discussion is full of very interesting facts and just useless opinions. what's a better way to run an economy? every consumer of food goes out into the fields to pick what they will eat? Or there are specialized pickers who pick the food and drop it off in bulk near the people who will eat it? And on the other end of that process, should we all dig our own latrines? Or have a toilets+sewer system run by professionals? cobalt is a commodity product. when you melt chunks of cobalt together, you can't tell where the cobalt came from any more. Who give a shit how Apple handles its cobalt? If it's doing it on a large scale, economics will dictate what is cost effective because how the economy handles cobalt is actually important, but how individual players do is completely unimportant. If it's important how certain waste is handled, yes, set up waste streams so that experts can make sure all the parts of an old phone are handled, don't as laypeople discuss the cobalt separately from the lithium, lead, etc. I'm just pointing it out because for a community of people who take smug self-assurance in both their technical prowess and ability to be rational and unswayed by emotion, you all know fuck-all about economics, wear your <3 recycling hearts on your sleeves, and have your heads in your asshats. Being drawn in to this discussion, you've most-all been bamboozled by PR/marketing despite all your ad-blockers and sophistication. If we've agreed that specialists will pick and deliver the food, it's interesting to learn about it, yes, but do we need to hear how each other feels about that?
- nrvn 4y agoThat’s all cool. And then I go to a supermarket to buy an eco-friendly toothbrush and the cheapest one will cost twice as the best plastic-made. And I vote with my wallet and my perception of what is good for the longevity of my teeth. Turn around and you’ll notice the same pattern in packaging of candies and biscuits, water and milk bottles, pretty much everything. There will be products packaged or made of non-plastic of some sort but they will be in the minority, niche and more expensive. While plastic and other non-recyclable materials are more favorable from the economic and regulatory perspective any type of “eco-friendly” material and production cycle will be losing this race. Kudos to Apple though for setting up their own standards and continuously raising the bar!
- snvzz 4y agoAnd won't let you replace the battery yourself ... for eco reasons.
- junon 4y agoGood. Cobalt mining is still a rich avenue for cheap child labor in underdeveloped areas that most major tech manufacturers still exploit.
- wooque 4y agoPenny wise, pound foolish. The best they could do to save the environment would be to improve on repairability and stop producing e-waste.