Since Apple released its new environmental report, the company says it’s going to do what it can for the good of the planet. It seems like it was only last year that Apple bragged about all the money they saved in recycling. That amount included the $40 million it saved in re-used gold from older devices. Yet this year the company says that it plans to change the way it uses raw materials in the devices it makes.
With its new idea, Apple has hopes that it will be able to use only recycled materials to create future products. Yet there’s still quite a lot to be done if Apple wants to even start this project. First the company has to find a way to make sure that used iPhones come back to the company instead of ending up abandoned in junk pile. The closer the company gets to using recycled parts, the better things will be for all iPhone users.
Apple also has strong faith in its restoration of materials. The company has Liam robots that are capable of taking apart over 2.4 million iPhone 6 models per year. The line that possess the Liam robots are capable of salvaging 1,900 kg of aluminum for every 100,000 phones that are disassembled. The company has also, in fact, built Mac Mini units with the recovered materials taken apart by Liam.
It wasn’t too long ago that Greenpeace made it embarrassingly known that companies like Netflix, Amazon, HBO, ASUS, and Acer use coal and gas power to run their servers. Therefore, Apple wasn’t afraid to make it known that its data centers are completely renewable. This means that things like FaceTime, iMessage, and Siri are running on 100 percent renewable energy sources.
Rather than purchasing their energy from the wholesale market, Apple wants to be able to own as much of its own power generation as possible. This effort extends to Apple desire to own, and even control, all of its computers. In order to make this desire a full reality, Apple is doing what it can to build, run, and buy its very own wind and solar energy farms. It plans to fully cut the middle man out using this effort.
Apple says that by 2020 it wants to have a source 4 GW of power generation that will be able to power over 725,000 homes. That power source will span out between sites that are owned and operated by Apple.
The project is the brainchild of Lisa Jackson who joined Apple back in 2013 after leaving her position as head of EPA. Since then she’s been behind the wheel in driving Apple toward converting to renewable energy. In fact, since she started, Apple has gone from the bottom of Grenpeace’s list to the top three for the last three year in a row.
