How Apple wants to create value from e-waste

austin The old iPhones roll up a ramp. The robot Daisy grabs her with one arm and clamps her in a holder. This is the first of many steps to recycle the devices.

In a nondescript factory building outside of Austin, Texas, Apple is working on the future. One of the world’s two Daisy recycling robots is in use here, the other is in the Netherlands. The Handelsblatt was one of the few media that was able to visit the factory building – Apple is known for its reticence.

Daisy is an important project for Apple. The company strives for a closed cycle in order to protect the environment, avoid CO2, secure scarce raw materials – and thus get hold of a treasure.

In Germany alone, more than 200 million used smartphones, cell phones and tablets are lying around unused. From this amount of equipment, around five tons of gold, 29 tons of silver and 1800 tons of copper could be recovered – the gold alone is worth more than 55 million euros.

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But it’s not that easy to get to the valuable inner workings. So far, most smartphones have hardly been designed for recycling, and it is technically difficult to disassemble and recycle them properly. The recycling rate of smartphones has therefore been very low so far – and the mountain of garbage is getting bigger and bigger: sales increased by six percent last year. According to market researcher Gartner, more than 1.4 billion smartphones were sold worldwide in 2021.

In 100 years some of the raw materials will be exhausted

Smartphones are becoming more powerful with each generation. Older devices can no longer cope with the new software after a while, and the battery power also decreases. A corresponding number of devices gather dust in drawers or end up in the garbage. They contain valuable materials that are urgently needed.

Professor Tom Welton, President of Britain’s Royal Society of Chemistry, warns of a global e-waste crisis. A mobile phone consists of 30 raw materials. Welton and his team have calculated that global reserves will be exhausted for six of them in the next 100 years.

Added to this are global distortions in the supply chains. A number of the rare earths that are important for smartphones are mined in China. The Beijing Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) only tightened export controls on rare earths at the end of last year. According to data from the US Geological Survey, the European Union already obtains almost all of the rare earths required for production from China. For the USA, the figure is 80 percent.

Apple robot Daisy

The robot can disassemble different iPhone models.

(Photo: Apple)

As a next step, the robot Daisy separates the iPhones from their displays and the devices are transferred to the next module of the recycling process. A product decision is taking revenge: Because the batteries are firmly glued into the devices and are not plugged in or screwed in like with other smartphones, Daisy has to use a trick.

With a loud hiss, the iPhone is cooled down to minus 80 degrees. This can cause the battery to come loose. With a soft “plop”, the battery falls into a container on the edge of the robot.

However, the robot’s performance is not even sufficient to refurbish the devices sold by Apple alone. Daisy can disassemble up to 200 iPhones per hour. However, according to data from Gartner, Apple sold more than 239 million smartphones last year. To recycle them all, Daisy would have to target more than 27,000 devices per hour.

iPhone battery sticking is a recycling problem

Apple isn’t the only company working on robots to disassemble electronics for recycling. The European Union (EU) promoted a very similar approach with ADIR. In contrast to Daisy, the robot was designed by the ADIR consortium from the start to recognize and professionally disassemble smartphones from different manufacturers. However, the ADIR robot remained a prototype.

“I currently consider the approach of dismantling to be more promising than the classic treatment with shredding and melting down, but of course it is also technologically more complex and has further implications for the entire recycling of e-waste,” says the researcher Cord Fricke-Begemann, who is involved in the project by Fraunhofer Institute for Laser Technology.

In contrast to Daisy, the ADIR has not yet resulted in a robot for regular operation. However, Daisy’s performance should not be overrated, says Cord Fricke-Begemann. “The dismantling machine only solves a few partial problems, and it’s also called a ‘recycling robot’, which is somewhat irritating.” However, the components are not yet fully recycled.

Only six out of ten points for the iPhone in terms of ease of repair

The Dutch smartphone manufacturer Fairphone, on the other hand, has thought about recycling and the service life of its devices from the very beginning. The company started in Amsterdam in 2013 and launched the fourth generation of its Fairphone at the end of last year. The special feature: Many components of the smartphone can be easily exchanged. In addition, the manufacturer provides the new generation with software updates until 2025 and gives a five-year guarantee. A warranty period of two years is common for other manufacturers.

If something does break on the smartphone, you can order eight spare parts from the display to the camera to the speakers and replace them yourself in just a few simple steps.

Apple robot Daisy

The machine disassembles up to 200 iPhones per hour.

(Photo: Apple)

The team at the service provider iFixit, which specializes in repairing electronic devices, determined what this means in practice. The specialists give each smartphone a rating based on how easy or difficult it is to repair. The Generation 4 Fairphone received the top value of ten out of ten possible points. The Dutch smartphones have been at the top of the hit list for years.

For comparison: The top model iPhone 13 Pro from Apple gets six out of a possible ten points from iFixit. The repair specialists praise the “improvements in durability over the years”. But due to the built-in glass, there is a great risk that the iPhone will break if it falls. Also, “there is still no easy way to replace the rear glass.”

Apple sells self-repair parts for the first time

Daisy took the iPhones from which the batteries were removed to the next step. This is where the screws are removed from the devices. With the previous model from Daisy, Apple tried to unscrew the screws individually. However, the approach had proven to be impractical. Daisy uses a brute technique and punches the screws directly out of the aluminum frame of the devices.

Apple robot Daisy

Daisy focuses on 13 raw materials when disassembling the devices. These include aluminium, cobalt, copper, gold or lithium.

(Photo: Apple)

The devil is in the details. Anyone who has tried to repair an iPhone knows this. Hardly any provider has made it as difficult for do-it-yourself customers for so long as Apple. This was not only due to the structure of the devices. It was also almost impossible to get replacement parts from Apple. The group is now tackling this issue in order to increase the sustainability and attractiveness of the products. In April, the group introduced a service in the USA through which end customers can order 200 different original spare parts. However, the parts are only available for the latest generations. Anyone who uses iPhones that are two years old or older still encounters a problem here.

Recycling rate of smartphones is very low

Apple is not alone in its problems. A number of companies have been trying for years to achieve an efficient recycling cycle for smartphones. However, the results are mixed. With the Cell Phone Recycling Act of 2004, the US state of California forced device manufacturers to take care of the processing of sold products. But in 2020, out of 8.5 million smartphones, only 1.3 million smartphones were returned, representing a 15.9 percent recycling rate, according to the Department of Toxic Substances Control.

Building a business with recycled phones is not easy. The provider NextWorth Solutions, founded in 2005, was considered a promising company, collected some investor capital – only to disappear from the scene in 2019.

The pressure from the legislature is not yet great enough, and despite rising raw material prices, recycling is only worthwhile to a limited extent. In purely arithmetical terms, you get raw materials worth a little more than four dollars from a smartphone, which is not much given the effort involved. In addition, cell phones in California are considered hazardous materials due to chemicals that must be disposed of separately.

Inside Valley: This is what Apple does with old iPhones

The robot Daisy has now finished disassembling the iPhone. In the last step, it is people who push the individual parts into large containers. Daisy focuses on 13 raw materials when disassembling the devices. These include aluminum, cobalt, copper, gold and lithium.

Although Daisy has disassembled the mobile phone, the raw materials are not yet usable. “We can send some of the components – such as batteries or printed circuit boards – directly to special recyclers near the plants. They’re usually the best way to recycle the materials they contain,” said an Apple spokesman. For other components – like the audio modules or the vibration motor Taptic Engine – there is no on-site solution. In order to process these further, Apple is developing other processes and robots.

Apple provides Daisy patents for free

While iFixit’s Kevin Purdy generally praises Apple’s approach, he sees problems. “Daisy as a recycling robot makes no economic sense,” Purdy wrote in an iFixit analysis. Daisy’s capacities are simply too limited and the robot is limited to iPhone models. In addition, there is a lack of economic incentives to return old iPhones to Apple, since the prices on the market for used smartphones are significantly higher than the vouchers that Apple offers for the return of devices.

Many machines are needed around the world, which are not only able to dismantle the devices of one manufacturer. “If the manufacturers would make all technical information for the recycling of their devices public, many players could participate,” said Fricke-Begemann.

This is exactly what Apple wants to help with. According to the spokesman, the group wants to license the patents for Daisy free of charge. The hope: companies will take up the idea and a new ecosystem will be created – without Apple having to pay for it.

More: Service margin of 73 percent: Apple shows how a company can reinvent itself.

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