Apple's Recycling Initiatives Recover $40 Million in Gold

Apple released its latest annual environmental
report yesterday, and some of the numbers
included reveal just how much the company is
able to recover from old devices.
Business Insider notes that Apple was able to
recover over 61 million pounds of steel, aluminum,
glass, and other materials from its computers and
iPhones. Included in that total is 2,204 pounds of
gold, which is well over a ton.
The gold haul alone is worth $40 million at
current prices ($1,229.80 per troy ounce of gold),
while the total amount of material recovered is
reportedly worth well over $50 million.
Cult of Mac ran the figures quoted by Apple
through today's metal prices, and came up with
individual figures for copper ($6.4 million),
aluminum ($3.2 million), silver ($1.6 million),
nickel ($160,426), zinc ($109,503), and lead
($33,999).
Apple says in total it collected almost 90 million
pounds of ewaste through its recycling programs,
which works out as 71 percent of the total weight
of the products the company sold seven years
earlier.
Apple made much of its efforts to reduce waste at
its media event last month. The company also
unveiled a robotic system it has developed called
'Liam' that can disassemble old iPhones and
recover recyclable materials.
The company said that Liam will initially focus on
recycling junked iPhone 6 handsets, but Apple
plans to modify and expand the system to
deconstruct different models and recover more
resources.