Apple Announces Plan To Make All Products From Recycled Materials

Credit: The Japan Times

Apple recently released its annual environmental report and with it, a bold declaration to make all new products from recycled materials. Engadget relays that last year, the tech company boasted about how much money was saved via recycling efforts, including $40 million worth of gold from re-used devices. Now that it’s 2017, Apple wants to “close the loop” by making all future products from eco-friendly materials.

The company intends to meet this goal in part by reclaiming and re-using old Apple devices. Obviously, it has a long way to go, but one knows the technology developer is not shy when it comes to setting goals.

Apple has been steadily shifting toward renewable energy resources since 2011 when Greenpeace publicly shamed it for being one of the most unsustainable tech companies. At present, all data centers run on renewable energy, and Apple has even partnered with or built its own solar and wind farms to generate all the energy it needs.

By 2020, the company hopes to have 4 GW of power generation capacity – enough to power 725,000 homes. Power generated will be allotted to Apple owned and operated sites, as well as to those it has helped bankroll with partners. It is possible that in the future, Apple will begin selling its excess power to achieve additional income.

Credit: Inhabitat/Apple

One of the challenges Apple faces is ensuring secondhand iPhones are returned back to the company’s headquarters, so they may be either repurposed or recycled. Lisa Jackson, former head of the EPA that joined Apple and who is credited with spearheading the company’s sustainability efforts, is confident all goals outlined in the recent environmental plan can be reached.

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