Apple has a recycling program for their iPhones. And they have to collect lithium ion batteries, as they’re a retailer that sells them. However, that’s far from the only recyclable waste Apple creates. They could easily collect, recycle, and reuse many of the parts in their accessories. Unfortunately, Apple simple doesn’t.
As a tech reviewer who keeps buying this stuff, it’s really starting to bother me.
Plastics, and Magnets, and Silicone, Oh My!
So much of what Apple sells can be recycled. Not 100% of each product, but certainly large quantities of it. For every bit that is recycled, that’s less that has to come out of the ground or end up back in the ground in a form that nature can’t break down. Not only do they fill our landfills and oceans with waste, but the process of pulling these materials out of the ground are often highly unethical. Tin and cobalt mines, necessary for electronics, often make use of unsafe mining conditions and child labor.
But so much of this is reusable. Nimble made cases from recycled CDs and water bottles. Apple could easily do the same. Their cases use a plastic frame that can likely be recycled, and silicone that can be shredded and placed into new silicone products. The leather, admittedly, is harder to reuse, but not impossible. Destroyed cables? They still have perfectly good copper to reuse. The ring of magnets used for MagSafe likely wouldn’t be damaged from within Apple’s products. Reusing them saves the difficulty of mining and production.
Apple’s already collecting some of their products for recycling, from iPhones to MacBooks and everything in between. I’m just suggesting that perhaps they should collect everything with an Apple logo.