All Apple-designed printed circuit boards will use 100 percent certified recycled gold plating by 2025. This includes rigid boards, such as the main logic board, and flexible boards, like those connecting to the cameras or buttons in iPhone.
Since pioneering an exclusively recycled supply chain for gold in the plating of the main logic board for iPhone 13, Apple has extended the material’s use in additional components and products, including the wire of all cameras in the iPhone 14 lineup, and printed circuit boards of iPad, Apple Watch, AirPods Pro, MacBook Pro, Mac mini, and HomePod. Apple is also working to encourage broader adoption of recycled gold for non-custom components across the electronics industry.
By 2025, the company will use 100 percent certified recycled tin soldering on all Apple-designed printed rigid and flexible circuit boards. In recent years, Apple’s use of recycled tin has expanded to the solder of many flexible printed circuit boards across Apple products, with 38 percent of all tin used last year coming from recycled sources. The application of recycled tin across even more components is underway, and the company is engaging more suppliers in this effort.
Apple sources primary minerals responsibly and drives the highest level of human rights and environmental standards across its supply chain. Apple was the first electronics company to publish a list of cobalt and lithium refiners in its battery supply chain, with cobalt in 2016 and lithium in 2020. In 2017, the company mapped its supply chain for rare earths. And since 2015, every identified smelter and refiner for tin, tungsten, tantalum, and gold has participated in independent third-party audits.
In the transition to recycled and renewable content, Apple has prioritized 14 materials based on environment, human rights, and supply impact that together account for nearly 90 percent of the material shipped in Apple products: aluminum, cobalt, copper, glass, gold, lithium, paper, plastics, rare earth elements, steel, tantalum, tin, tungsten, and zinc.
In 2022, about 20 percent of all material shipped in Apple products came from recycled or renewable sources. This includes the first use of recycled copper foil in the main logic board of iPad (10th generation), the introduction of certified recycled steel in the battery tray of MacBook Air with the M2 chip, 100 percent recycled tungsten in the latest Apple Watch lineup, and the aluminum enclosures found in many Apple products, made with a 100 percent recycled aluminum alloy designed by Apple.
Apple’s work to pioneer new research and development for end-of-life disassembly and recycling has helped make this progress possible. Through extensive efforts including partnerships with leading research institutions and the Material Recovery Lab in Austin, Texas, Apple engineers and experts are developing innovative ways to give materials in Apple products new life, and helping inform design decisions that support disassembly and recovery.
MacDailyNews Note: More info about Apple and the environment here.
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Have Apple completely analyzed the total energy budget of reclaiming the metal and recycling it?
Apple is a smart company, and they may have done all their homework. But I think it is recognized that complete analysis is often a very complicated undertaking, and many people, anxious to grab favorable headlines, are willing to make statements like this that ultimately are unfounded.
hey apple forget that, let’s fiber optic channels on the motherboard. let’s have optical chips, processors, ram, persistent memory… if you are going to add something add that.
Cheaper materials, if true, should mean cheaper prices for Apple products, no?
No, just larger profit margins for Apple
Apple no longer innovates or takes leadership risk. Tim only cares about raising profit margins through logistics. Good enough for mid level management but not a leader with vision willing to take risk. Apple plays it to safe to lead. Tim drives Apple like a little old lady in rush hour traffic; Safe, slow and gonna get AAPL killed. Grandma please pull over and put real leadership behind the wheel