We all heard about Liam: Apple’s robot that disassembles an iPhone in 11 seconds, at the launch of the iPhone SE. We all have wondered: what would disassembling discarded iPhones reveal? What goes into making an iPhone? Well, a lot of treasure that’s for sure.
Disassembling discarded iPhones and discovering what’s inside
A lot of intricate work goes into making an iPhone. But what was discovered among the many discarded iPhones in 2015 was that Apple turns a profit, even with them. The metals that go into making an iPhone can be reused for profit. What are these metals you ask? Here’s the list of metals uncovered from discarded iPhones in 2015:
First off, the total weight of the material recovered from discarded iPhones in 2015 is a whopping 27.8 million kg, which included:
1,000 kg of Gold
3,000 kg of Silver
1.34 million kg of Copper
10.48 million kg of Steel
6 million kg of Plastic
5.4 million kg of Glass
2 million kg of Aluminum
86,000 kg of Cobalt
18,000 kg of Nickel
20,000 kg of Lead
59,000 kg of Zinc and
2,000 kg of Tin
The gold recovered from these discarded iPhones itself gives back quite a fortune to the company. Apple uses gold because it is a better conductor of electricity and is not prone to corrosion like silver. This is necessarily important to maintain the high-speed of the iPhones.
“In 2015, we diverted more than 89 million pounds of e-waste from landfills. And more recently, we introduced Liam, a line of robots that can disassemble an iPhone every 11 seconds and sort its high-quality components so they can be recycled, reducing the need to mine those resources from the earth.” – Apple
Apart from being environmentally responsible, Apple has also made sure that it gets quite a profit by recycling discarded iPhones. Now, how many other phone companies can boast about that?
*In case you were wondering more about LIAM:
*Images Source: Inhabitat.
