Apple embraces the idea of environmental corporate responsibility and its annual report shows an impressive quantity of recycled metals.
By harvesting older gadgets, the OEM pulled back 61 million pounds of steel, glass, aluminum and a variety of different industrial materials.
Last, but not least, Apple got back as much as 2,204 pounds of gold (that's over a ton of gold, for our friends who use the metric system).
Seeing how the price per gold ounce is currently at $1,229.80, it is safe to say that Apple recovered almost $40 million in gold by embarking on a heavy recycling program for old computers and smartphones.
To assist the handling of outdated products and save as much as possible from the obsolete devices, Apple built a special line of robots (see image above).
Fairphone, an activist group that scrutinizes the supply chains of OEMs, reports that a standard handset requires about 30 milligrams of gold (0.001 ounces), especially in circuit boards and internal components. The quantity of gold found inside an iPhone amasses to about $1 in value. A standard desktop Mac computer could contain as much as $9 worth of the precious metal.
Seeing how Apple recycles millions of iPhones, iPads, Macs and an Apple Watch here and there, the quantities stack up.
A part of the 2,204 pounds of gold could be tracked to golden Apple Watches, which experts claim to contain more than 50 grams of 18-karat gold. However, we find it unlikely that customers who spent north of $10,000 on an Apple Watch would send it back for recycling after only one year.
Apple also recovered other precious or semi-precious metals.
Figures in Apple's report show that the enterprise pulled in 6,612 pounds of silver. With a $16.27 price per ounce of silver, Apple won $107,577. The firm also recovered no less than a whopping 2,953,360 pounds of copper. At $2.19 per copper ounce, the profit surged to $6,467,858.
Copper is a great material for printed circuit boards, cables, connectors and chip conductors, among other components. Silver, on the other hand, is crafted into electrical pathways and special inks that get embedded into composite boards.
During the summer of 2015, a number of major companies, including Apple, pledged to donate a total of $140 billion (yes, that is a "b") to sustain the efforts of curbing carbon emissions.
