Starting soon, your iPhone could be made from recycled materials.
In its Environmental Responsibility Report, Apple announced its plans to become greener—saying it would stop mining the materials for its products.
“Traditional supply chains are linear. Materials are mined, manufactured as products, and often end up in landfills after use. Then the process starts over and more materials are extracted from the earth for new products. We believe our goal should be a closed-loop supply chain, where products are built using only renewable resources or recycled material,” the Apple report said.
But this is an ambitious goal for Apple, considering the company doesn’t know how this will be achieved—yet.
Lisa Jackson, Apple’s vice president of environment, policy and social initiatives told VICE news that, “we’re actually doing something we rarely do, which is announce a goal before we’ve completely figured out how to do it.”
But other than helping the environment, reusing materials could be good for Apple’s bottom line.
“A totally recycled smartphone will help Apple to increase loyalty among eco-friendly consumers and eventually reduce their production costs by using some of the components from older phones,” Francisco Jeronimo, research director for European mobile devices at IDC, first told CNBC.