I find this section on the elimination of plastic from their packaging interesting as well:
> The development of fiber alternatives for packaging components like screen films, wraps, and foam cushioning has kept Apple on track toward this ambitious goal. To address the remaining 4 percent plastic in the company’s packaging footprint, Apple is innovating to replace labels, lamination, and other small uses. In the last year, Apple developed a custom printer to introduce digital printing directly onto the boxes of iPhone 14 and iPhone 14 Pro, eliminating the need for most labels. And a new overprint varnish found in iPad Air, iPad Pro, and Apple Watch Series 8 packaging replaces the polypropylene plastic lamination found on boxes and packaging components.
I would like them to publish the designs and allow others to use these machines, materials, and tech. It’s not really an improvement until the tech is available to all product producers.
>It’s not really an improvement until the tech is available to all product producers.
Sorry, that's not true at all. When they ship a couple hundred million phones a year its an impactful improvement regardless of where else the tech goes. Having said that, don't you think these recycling contractors are using that knowledge for other customers?
Is it really that hard to say that its great that such a large vendor is working so hard at these goals, good on them? There are plenty of things to criticize about Apple, but these changes represent real corporate goals and serious investment.
> It's empty virtue signaling if they retain some patent or otherwise contractually obligate their vendors to not share the technology
They've reduced waste more than most users on this site--including you and me--combined. But that's "empty virtue signaling" because they didn't hand their competitors a silver spoon? That term really has lost all meaning.
They've not reduced waste, they're just producing less waste than they were before. Meanwhile, the drop in the bucket they've "reduced" can't be repeated elsewhere across not only their industry but others, so it is a relatively unremarkable change.
>They've not reduced waste, they're just producing less waste than they were before.
reduce (n) - To bring down, as in extent, amount, or degree; diminish. synonym: decrease.
This is the worst kind of pedantic because it's also wrong. They have reduced waste production and they recycle existing waste. How is that not reducing waste?
is your point to criticize apple for doing their part because they aren't also doing the work for other companies not doing their part? How is that apples responsibility? The blame for other companies not doing their part is on the other companies. Society won't get anywhere if they blame bad things on the only companies doing things to correct the bad things.
They don't have to give the technology away. They could sell it or otherwise license it to other manufacturers. Keeping this technology a secret just so they can differentiate their packaging for marketing reasons is just about the most cynical business move they could make.
No one has presented any evidence that they are keeping it secret. You are arguing against a straw man. Maybe they are just using a tech that some other company created. If they sued someone for using some of their recycling tech then I am right with you. But these accusations and projections based on assumptions are unfounded.
Setting aside the secrecy assertion, don't we want companies to innovate and use reduced eco-footprint as a marketing advantage? Companies are profit motivated and must be to survive. Don't we want other companies to look at Apple and see the market goodwill fostered by eco-friendly practices and strive to emulate that? Or strive to create even better ways of doing things?
Throwing stones at environmental innovation just seems a counter-productive reaction.
I'm not blaming them for anything, but I'm also not going to pretend that what they're doing wrt. label printing is going to make a significant impact when viewing the bigger picture.
I am definitely glad to see they're not using primary cobalt and instead using only recycled, though, and think that part is praiseworthy.
> not going to pretend that what they're doing wrt. label printing is going to make a significant impact when viewing the bigger picture
They're creating a culture of sustainability. That means not ignoring the small stuff just because it's small. And cutting plastic waste by the truck every few hours [1] is not small.
[1] 26,500 iPhones' plastic covers saved every hour
The amount of plastic you see in an iPhone package is a small percentage of how much plastic is used to manufacture the iPhone. Every single component is packed inside of plastic containers.
In the Steve Jobs Lost Interview, he was extremely proud of having made Apple the number one company in printers in terms of profit when he was kicked out. He remembered all the business deals he made with Adobe and others to start Apple’s laser printers. You can tell he was sour they pissed away that advantage.
"We actually made the imager, the raster imaging guts for the Apple LaserWriter. And
I was just fascinated by Apple's business model. They shipped, drop shipped from I guess it was Fuji or
from Ricoh or Cannon. I guess it was Cannon. They bought the Cannon engine with no controller and
they told us when to ship the controller, the power cord and the manuals in a box for the customer to put it into the printer. So they never touched the printer at all. It was a brilliant <laughs> business model. No inventory. <laughs> No payables, you know, all receivables. <laughs> "
User-replaceable batteries create a waste stream of “used” batteries. I wonder what the recycling rate of those used batteries is, compared to the recycling rate of iPhones and their embedded batteries? Gut feel here says way lower. If true, killing the user-replaceable battery might be a net win for reducing consumption of problematic materials.
By your logic, user-replaceable filters create a waste stream of "used" filters, and user-replaceable light bulbs create a waste stream of "used" light bulbs.
I personally like nonserviceable batteries because I want my devices to be water resistant, but I'd be more hesitant to throw a battery in the trash than I would be to throw a dead device in the trash.
People have the option of recycling used devices, whether they be battery devices or smartphone devices, at a multitude of retailers.
"Only the LEDs I have in table lamps have survived more than five years. All enclosed bulbs die from cheap components and heat damage. "
Part of the problem is trying to make LEDs work in our preexisting lighting systems which requires components to make a low voltage DC light work with our existing AC wiring.
> “My starting point is, get the economics right,” Tim Cooper, a design professor who heads the sustainable-consumption research group at Nottingham Trent University, told me. It’s already possible to buy durable products, he said—Miele washing machines, Vitsoe shelving, Jaguar cars. But, because such products command premium prices, they remain niche goods; by Cooper’s estimate they make up less than five per cent of the market. To truly change a light bulb will require policy changes—whether regulatory, market-based, or voluntary within industries—that support longer product lifetimes
The general sentiment from teardown reviews is that the bulbs are using cheap electronics, and they could charge perhaps another $1 MSRP to make a bulb that lasted for a dozen years instead of a handful by switching out some components. When bulbs were $15 apiece that was exceptionally galling. It makes a tiny bit more sense when they're 3 for $16.
As a European I am a bit surprised by this comment. Resistant based light bulbs have been banned already for some years, and all the LED lighting you can get in stores just work? Don't really have to think about it. Also would not assume that a 220V grid would make this easier.
> Part of the problem is trying to make LEDs work in our preexisting lighting systems
I would agree if lamps designed from scratch for LEDs were any better in terms of longevity, but so far our ~20 year old halogen lamp has survived more than a dozen LEDs.
This is a problem I have with the right to repair movement--what happens to the replaced part? This is hard to police within regulated businesses, but just look at the landfills and scrapyards from the times when more items were more easily user serviceable; it's not pretty.
I'm all for enforcing user serviceability, however it has the potential to be a backwards step for the environment if stern statutes are not put in place and actively policed, with the onus being on the party performing the replacement.
When buying a lead-acid battery or a remanufactured car part, there's often a core charge that is rebated when you return the old part. The last battery I purchased it was $22 (on a $170 battery). Now, I would've returned the old battery anyway because it's easy, convenient, and what the heck else would I do with it, but $22 was also a pretty decent incentive.
So I'd think you just need to get the incentives right: make it easy and convenient to return and provide a financial reason to do so.
On the other hand, last year I replaced all the smoke alarms in my home. It is essentially impossible to recycle the old alarms. Here's what my town says:
"Only a single household smoke alarm/detector will be accepted with your trash for garbage collection. If you have more than one, they must be disposed using one of these listed options; https://deq.nc.gov/conservation/recycling/general-recycling-... or, check manufacturer for take-back program."
Here's what my county says (in the "unacceptable items" section):
"Smoke detectors contain trace amounts of radioactive material. The recommendation is for consumers to return the smoke detectors to the manufacturers or contact NC Radiation Protection at 919-814-2250."
Here's what my state says:
"The Solid Waste Section recommends that it is safe for a single household fire/smoke detector to be disposed of in a lined municipal solid waste landfill."
No manufacturer has a take-bake program. The county isn't on the same page with the town and the state. So in the trash they went, one per week. Took 3 months to get rid of them all.
I went with three First Alert SC7010B, one per floor, which are photo electric and detect both smoke and CO. For the rest of the alarms I used First Alert 9120B which are ionizing. I figure I covered all my bases that way. I think they have a life span of a decade so it'll be a while before I need to replace them again.
That's fair. I'm assuming the majority case is simply: device breaks, can't be fixed easily, gets thrown away. I think we'd need some actual data to have a meaningful discussion about it.
That's a reasonable assumption. Anecdotally, on my local high street, there are at least 5 places--one official Apple service centre (not an Apple Store)--that offer battery and screen replacement for all mobile devices and tablets. At least 3 have been there for more than 5 years, including the official Apple one. There must be some demand for them all to survive.
My gut says it's higher since I would expect people who care about replacing batteries also care about recycling the old ones. Why do you think it's way lower?
The example I’m thinking of is when I sat next to someone in an airport who had just bought some garbage-tier “Samsung compatible” replacement battery from the duty free shop, for his garbage-tier phone. He popped in the new battery and tossed the old one in the trash.
Meanwhile, I know loads of people who have traded in, or simply handed in, their old iPhones in an Apple Store. I can’t imagine anyone casually tossing an old iPhone in the trash the way my feckless bench-neighbour did.
As someone with an arguably garbage-tier phone, sans replaceable battery, I don't think anyone would let me trade it in for a new one or even some sort of a discount, because there isn't a name like Apple behind it, nor the support network.
My previous phone that had replaceable batteries has two in total that I occasionally charge, so it can act as a temporary backup if anything happens to my current phone.
At least once those are used up and no longer hold any sort of a charge, I'll be able to dispose of them in the supermarket battery collection point or something like that. I'm not sure whether I'd want to cram my current phone in there with its memory chips intact.
I guess there are a lot of factors to consider, whether people can afford a certain device or whether they care about disposing of certain types of items responsibly being some of them. Some of this probably varies based on the region of the world as well.
I don't even know where I would be able to properly dispose of/recycle a Li-ion battery. City recycling only takes non-rechargeable batteries, and the drop box at the electronics store only takes whole devices with internal batteries (like shavers)
In general any big box store that sells devices containing lion/lipo batteries will also have a recycling point for them. I can't remember if there is an actual law governing that, but I assume it isn't out of the goodness of the corporations hearts.
Stores like Home Depot, Lowes, Walmart, Wegmans, Target, etc all have boxes you can drop bare lithium battery cells into. Usually right at the front of the store tucked off to the side somewhere. They usually have bags provided at the box to put the cells into. I deal with a lot of lipo batteries & don't want to be responsible for a fire, so I usually electrical tape the +/- terminals before dropping off as well.
I don't live in the US so it may be different but the big box stores near me all have signs on their dropboxes saying you can throw devices with internal batteries but not loose batteries
Wrap it in tape with an LED attached. Now it’s a device with internal battery, problem solved :)
Some hobby shops do nearly exactly this to get around import restrictions. Whether it’s inside something or not it’s still a lipo battery, imo it’s a silly rule and worth breaking.
I mean, it is at the airport. People function a lot different when travelling. I don't think there's much to an extrapolate out of regular behaviour from that observation.
> Meanwhile, I know loads of people who have traded in, or simply handed in, their old iPhones in an Apple Store. I can’t imagine anyone casually tossing an old iPhone in the trash the way my feckless bench-neighbour did.
Or just get the battery replaced at the Apple Store and keep using your phone an extra year or two. It's even cheaper than buying a new phone!
Some of their lowest end models, between their incredibly weak hardware and huge load of preinstalled crapware (some of which runs in the background), are pretty terrible user experiences. I hesitate to use the term “garbage tier” because it’s needlessly acerbic but it wouldn’t be an inaccurate descriptor.
If you want to achieve a very high battery recycling rate:
* Mandate that batteries be replaceable
* Mandate that repair shops recycle used batteries rather than throw them away
Mandates on consumers don't mean much because they're hard to enforce, but mandates on businesses are much easier. The consumer will come into the shop to get a new battery installed and drop off the old battery for recycling in the process.
Maybe throw in a trade-in rebate for the repair shops or something to seal the deal.
* Mandate that the companies/organizations that claim to recycle batteries actually recycle them, with severe penalties for the ones that bid low and then just send the batteries to a landfill in another country.
It’s annoying but not super hard to replace apple batteries, atleast for iPhone you can just buy a $30 kit on amazon and replace it, even with a higher capacity one too. It could be made easier but it takes less than 30m start to finish, and there are plenty youtube videos if you’ve never done it before.
Depends on what happens to the old device? Reuse? Great! Recycled? Just as great! In a drawer, gathering dust? Schrödinger's e-waste. Thrown away? Very bad.
So get it replaced. You're implying that this is an ordeal, when it simply isn't. Using a device until it no longer functions is the best option, clearly. If it's still functional, reuse it or have it recycled, safely and properly. Where is the issue? The option to extend the useful life exists where the existing battery can be replaced and, if done properly, recycled.
You trying to suggest that user replaceable batteries are the best option. I'm not sure that this is necessarily true. While it is beneficial that these devices are easier to repair, the are downsides to this. The obvious one is how many people will responsibly recycle their batteries once replaced? A battery left in a drawer is as bad as it not being recycled or being irresponsibly disposed of. The point is, it isn't as open and shut as you are implying.
> The obvious one is how many people will responsibly recycle their devices once replaced?
I agree, but my current anecdotal experience proves that there is considerably less friction for device recycling. Most, if not all, telco's will take an old mobile off your hands for recycling or refurbishing. Some will even accept trade-ins. Not sure what the situation with batteries is.
> ...so now I fail to see how device in drawer is worse than device and battery in landfill.
As bad not worse. It not being used. That means that it either can be recycled or refurbished and/or reused, except it's doing nothing. Materials that could be in use in some way aren't. In turn, new materials are needed, which adds environmental pressure. Small amounts add up. I can't see how this isn't a bad thing.
Well my anecdotal evidence tells me my broken smart phones end up in my box of old electronics.
I don't service my devices through the telcos. I use prepaid plans and phones. Many people do. That's why department stores sell them. Because there's a customer base that needs them.
I sincerely doubt many 40 dollar off the shelf phones are being recycled.
Many people also likely find it stupid to pay someone to change a battery when we can do it ourselves.
I think a more reasonable compromise here is that we can probably both agree that recycling in general needs massive improvements. i.e. make it incredibly easier for people to recycle or remove the choice from the consumer completely.
P.s. if it's Schrödingers e-waste it's inherently 50-50 on what happens to it so it's not as bad.
And if small amounts add up then arguably devices+batteries in landfill are worse than just battery.
> I don't service my devices through the telcos. I use prepaid plans and phones.
That's on you.
> Many people do. That's why department stores sell them. Because there's a customer base that needs them.
Then make the department store responsible for offering recycling points. Make them responsible.
> I sincerely doubt many 40 dollar off the shelf phones are being recycled.
And that is a problem.
> Many people also likely find it stupid to pay someone to change a battery when we can do it ourselves.
Sure. Given the amount of small businesses that offer phone repair, many don't for a variety of reasons too. My own; keeping the manufacturer responsible for the rare earth materials, and if they fuck up the repair, they are liable. I fuck it up, I'm on my own.
> I think a more reasonable compromise here is that we can probably both agree that recycling in general needs massive improvements. i.e. make it incredibly easier for people to recycle or remove the choice from the consumer completely.
I agree wholeheartedly. To answer your postscript; being in a drawer unused is as bad as being in a landfill because there are materials and components that could be salvaged and reused/recycled. By not recycling them or reusing the device, new materials have to mined and processed. Th only thing you can say is that potentially harmful materials are leaching out, but as discussed, that is only part of the picture. The degree to it being marginally better being in a drawer is negligible.
> And if small amounts add up then arguably devices+batteries in landfill are worse than just battery.
Neither is good. Arguably, losing your hearing is better than losing your sight. The better option is losing neither.
"Then make the department store responsible for offering recycling points. Make them responsible."
Yeah I agree. More recycling for everything. I know that some hardware stores let you drop off old dead batteries but not typically lithium based iirc.
Some groceries stores also have kiosks that pay for old phones, easily could be adapted for batteries as well.
I think personally letting people chuck everything into one bin and sort it at the collection site is a pathway to eliminate a lot of waste and eliminates arguing over which is often more recycled, a phone or a battery.
If Apple hadn't existed, "smartphones" wouldn't look remotely like they do now.
That's not to say that there wouldn't be some that have the general form factor of today's iPhone, but without the iPhone as a runaway success to copy, the rest of the market would not have standardized on that form factor to nearly this degree.
Sounds nice. I want to believe. But, let's get real...Apple doing something good for humanity? I still remember the separate charger shitshow. There must be a catch here as well.
The common complaints against Apple in this thread are echoed, but no one is criticizing Apple while being pragmatic. Everybody is dogmatic.
Apple will not provide user replaceable batteries. That’s clear. It’s probably too expensive and complicated for them to do that and have waterproof devices. They instead offer replacements, and third-party shops know how to replace batteries too. With the airpods, Apple needs to be roasted endlessly for creating time-bomb trash though.
But staying realistic, Apple massively improved the repair ability with the iPhone 14 by sandwiching the phone instead of fitting it on the back plate. They also improved the repairability of their laptops recently.
The worst excesses of Apple’s poor internal design seems to be behind us.
> no one is criticizing Apple while being pragmatic [...] it is expensive and complicated for them to do that and have waterproof devices
and
> with the airpods, Apple needs to be roasted endlessly for creating time-bomb trash
I feel like every discussion of airpods and e-waste on HN totally misses the mark. The average lifespan of a pair of airpods (across all users) is probably not very different than the average lifespan of a pair of wired headphones -- people lose/replace stuff all the time, and wired headphones fail because of stress! Just because 1% of eco-conscious power users are now forced to throw away usable headphones doesn't actually make a big difference in terms of total e-waste. Also, it takes ~4000 pairs of airpods being thrown away to match the by-weight e-waste of throwing away a single 70 inch TV. Even if you are just worried about batteries, a single e-bike battery is like 2000 times larger than an airpod battery. If one was trying to minimize e-waste through by improving the reusability, Airpods just seem like totally the wrong target compared to the hundreds of much larger products with slightly worse rates of reuse / recycle
Yeah, I definitely only expect my wired earbud headphones to last 2-4 years, which sounds consistent with airpods. Often one of the ears goes in that time because the wire breaks.
Ofc I refuse to believe airpods would last 6months before I dropped/lost/etc them. But that is just me rather than a criticism :D
iPhone batteries are user replaceable though! Apple will sell you the battery for $91 (only $45 if you send your old battery back) and will rent you all the equipment you need packed in two pelican cases for $49/week, shipping included!
Why is it expected that you should be able to swap an internal component if you haven’t used a screwdriver before? Try swapping the brake pads in your car or fixing a blockage in your dishwasher and you’ll find that fixing the iPhone is comparatively quite easy.
> Apple needs to be roasted endlessly for creating time-bomb trash though.
Honestly I feel like they should just be much cheaper and have a trade-in program for it to make sure they're properly recycled.
Other than the battery, what are there of valuable components in it? A tiny chip and a speaker with a tiny bit of copper? If they can fully automate the recycling and production of them, that almost seems the more sensible thing to do. But right now they're just too expensive for that to be reasonable.
There are phones targeted at construction and emergency workers that manage waterproofing and removable batteries, they just have the opposite form and aesthetic of the iPhone.
Did people already forget that Samsung made their flagship phones waterproof back when they still had removable batteries, headphone jacks and SD card slots? And looking at Tim Cook's favorite metric - just 0.2mm thicker than the current iPhone.
Not long ago we heard the same PR garbage about glue and solder being necessary for slim laptops but somehow the Framework isn't that much of a brick either.
>Apple will not provide user replaceable batteries. It’s probably too expensive and complicated for them to do that and have waterproof devices.
I just want Apple to sell ME the battery. I dont want my battery to by crypto signed to my device.
>They instead offer replacements
Exactly, _replacement_. They wont just sell me a battery. You have to give them serial number, which in most cases means client PI. You also have to send old battery back for ~$40 credit to make the whole thing any financial sense.
>and third-party shops know how to replace batteries too
Apple store replaces battery in 2 hours, third party needs to explain to every single client why he needs to wait couple of days because you cant actually keep a stock of genuine batteries. Apple also wants to have access to third party service center books for 3 (or was that 5) years for "auditing :)))
I'm with you on this. They're misrepresenting themselves in a way that even may encourage others to make similar moves.
The real problem with secret economic motivations is when they either prevent or undermine meaningful effort. But Apple is enacting meaningful effort here. It's good.
I looked it up in the Oxford English Dictionary (via my local public library).
greenwash
verb, transitive. (a) To mislead (the public) or counter (public or media concerns) by falsely representing a person, company, product, etc., as being environmentally responsible; (b) to misrepresent (a company, its operations, etc.) as environmentally responsible.
The earliest source the OED found was in 1989, in The Daily Telegraph (London).
There’s also pinkwashing, for nominal support of the LGBTQ community or breast cancer awareness (sometimes literally just putting pink on a product). But in either case it is superficial.
A finer point - it’s mere marketing attempting to influence consumer buying decisions with platitudes that distract from pure capability evaluations or other considerations. Which obviously works on getting a lot of people over the purchasing hurdle.
Nice move. Let’s not forget their cobalt supply chain was involved in child labor in DRC [0] 4 years ago. Hope the next dozens of precious ressources will follow soon, starting with lithium.
Still is. You cannot get cobalt from Congo without child slavery, and 3/4 of all cobalt comes from Congo. No matter what the phone and car companies tell you
My previous iPhone 8 lasted from 2016 to 2023. The only reason I stopped using it was because I accidentally broke the screen and the touch panel under it. It still received new iOS versions and updates.
What exactly is throwaway about that when compared to the hundreds of variants Samsung and others produce with a 2 year lifespan and then no updates after?
“Throwaway” may be hyperbole, but the average lifespan in terms of iOS versions for an iPhone is about 5-6 years. (On the low side, someone who bought an iPhone SE in September 2018 only got four years.) The issue is that the hardware often works fine for 10 years or more. Nowadays it’s usually software that makes devices obsolete, without any real necessity.
I believe older iPhones still get security updates for a very long time. Much longer than 5 years, making them one of the longest-term supported devices on the market currently.
> The issue is that the hardware often works fine for 10 years or more.
I don't know about that. It technically still works, but you will feel it being slow because developers keep updating their apps to take advantage of new technologies and features. Even browsing the web keeps getting worse because web developers seem to cruft up their websites as much as the hardware can bear.
I really think around 5 years is the limit to be able to use your phone as an general purpose, internet connected device. If you want to repurpose it into an iPod Touch or Smarthome remote controller or something after that that's still doable even if you're using a deprecated version of iOS.
The story with iPads is a little different. If all it is for most people is a streaming service and article-reading machine those can last 10 years or more and the OS probably should have a longer life and a higher priority on making the batteries easily serviceable. I'd actually love a stripped-down, barebones version of iPad OS that makes it dumber but more secure. Sort of like booting in safe mode, for when people want to repurpose old devices.
This is part of the criticism, though: There is no inherent need for the software to become slower (and less efficient). Throwing the hands up on that front just means we’ll eternally keep churning, in the name of “progress”.
Even aside from the good point Gigachad also made, it's not really under Apple's control to make web and app developers be more efficient. People just develop and scope for the power envelope the hardware can provide. It would be great if they optimized for cutting bloat, but they just don't and there's nobody with the ability to dictate that they do.
App review processes are already opaque and inconsistent enough with fairly straightforward rules around what is and isn't around. I don't think devs are going to like it if Apple starts getting opinionated about how you're doing indexing on your SQL.
I think you are forgetting what phone apps 10 years ago looked like and the features they had. It’s not useless bloat that’s slowing them down, it’s the addition of actual features people like and take advantage of.
That is why I left the google Pixel for iPhone. I liked my Pixel, but at the time, they only did 3 years of support and security updates, I understand they recently upped it to 4 or 5 years? Sure, my iPhone costs more, but if I use a phone for its total life span (when it stops getting security updates), the iPhone comes out cheaper if you divide the cost of the phone by the number of years it gets supported.
I'm using an iPhone 6S, I changed the battery after around three years. The only issue is it gets pretty hot sometimes, still not sure what it is but it's manageable.
The slowing down was necessary to not overload the batteries (very obviously necessary since phones were resetting otherwise), and apple offered replacement batteries almost at cost. What more do you want??
It was a perfect engineering solution, poorly communicated to users.
I'll take a slightly slower phone (in reality not noticeable on most tasks) over unplanned restarts. My partner only just stopped using the iPhone 6 I bought in 2014, original battery all the way, and she had the throttling turned on for years without knowing or caring.
Apple did not communicate to users they were slowing down the phone to prevent issues. They did it silently so users would upgrade rather than replace the battery.
> apple offered replacement batteries almost at cost.
Only after they were caught slowing down phones without informing users.
> They did it silently so users would upgrade rather than replace the battery.
That's a deliberately uncharitable interpretation. It could just as easily be explained by them wanting the customers to not have a crashing phone tarnishing their opinion of the brand. If it were about money, they should have popped up a message saying "The phone is going to be slower because the battery is dead, contact your Apple Store to buy a new battery."
It was not and still is not commonplace for any company to discuss the deep engineering details of a product's battery management logic with customers. The majority of products just stop working, some have an indicator of "bad battery".
Apple has a long record of making decisions for users without presenting options about them. Having these problems solved for us rather than being bothered with them is part of what we've paid for all these years. But their audience is broader now, they're much more successful, and when this practice rubs people the wrong way we all hear about it in the press as if it's some Antennagate-level flaw or scandal with which they were "caught." So they put in an option to make the phone worse but the user happier and move on. I would say "but the reputation damage is done" if it wasn't a foregone conclusion to so many that Apple must be up to no good.
It’s not a useless straw man argument. iPhones typically have a longer life cycle than android phones. That is a fact. User replaceable batteries lower the quality and aesthetics of the phone. So there’s no benefit to having a better replaceable easily. Just take it to an Apple Store.
I did not make a comparison to Samsung, the op did. I am not arguing which phone is better, that's you and OP.
I was discussing apple's flaws and OP/you decided to talk about another company that was worse in an attempt to convince everyone that it's ok for apple to act a certain way.
Re Samsung, they sold 258.3M phones last year; approximately 60 SKUs--with < 3% having user replaceable parts. They are equally responsible. Do you hold them to the same standard?
> have been caught multiple times slowing phones down
Both Apple and Google found themselves in a situation where phones would suddenly go dead when the device was under high load despite the battery reporting that it had a charge, although with the Nexus 6P it was happening to devices that were only a year old.
> your phone will randomly shut down and completely die, even though your battery indicator might have said you had plenty of juice left. It's not a simple system crash, because your phone will stay dead until you connect it to a charger. We've seen reports of the battery dying from a charge as high as 67% to as low as 15% on both Android Marshmallow and Android Nougat.
> I never mentioned Samsung, so that's just a useless strawman argument you're making.
I was with you to some extent in your original post... sort of.. But this last response made me go from with you to thinking you have some sort of agenda, with a real bias and aren't actually interested in a real conversation, you just seem to want an argument that you feel you can win.
I understand why it wasn't feasible before with the rate of progress but now it should be possible. I want to see a LTS type of phone. Something like 10 years. Any other appliance, car, power tool etc. have much much longer useful lives.
I had the battery in my iPhone 6S replaced 4 times. Apple replaced it and it was no hassle. The first three replacements were free due to AppleCare and for the last one I think I paid $40 or $50. Just happened during a mall visit.
IT IS a hassle for many people. So, they just buy a new phone. This is why apple pushes you towards using them for something that could easily be made replaceable by the owner. The majority of people will not take their iPhone in and get the battery replaced and you know it.
Because you have to ship it somewhere or drive to somewhere and pay for it to be replaced.
Does that sound like a "green" way to do things to you? The point is they make it difficult for you to replace parts, hoping you just get a new phone instead.
The sooner you realize Apple doesn't actually give a shit about saving the planet and they only put on this facade to sell you more product.... the better off you'll be.
I own Apple products but I'm not buying their bs about wanting to make the world a better place. Stop holding these companies up as some religious replacement.
> Because you have to ship it somewhere or drive to somewhere and pay for it to be replaced.
The battery needs shipping to you or you need to drive* somewhere to pay for it. What is the difference?
> Does that sound like a "green" way to do things to you?
It certainly doesn't sound any worse.
>The sooner you realize Apple doesn't act...
Blah, blah, blah... Cynicism is easy to the point of being lazy. You and those like you want to repair stuff on your own, and that is fine. Don't pretend that you want to do it because it's any greener. It's as much green washing as Apple is being accused of - same at the USB-C port enforcement. I don't believe for one minute that you give any more or less of a shit about the environment that Apple or its employees do.
> I own Apple products but I'm not buying their bs about wanting to make the world a better place. Stop holding these companies up as some religious replacement.
You made a point, it was challenged and countered, and you're doubling down on it. The sooner you're honest about your motivations, the sooner we can have a sensible discussion.
* Not everywhere is a car-centric as the US--some of us can walk or use public transport, which is greener still.
I still have an iPhone 5s that is intact as well as a 2013 MacBook Pro. They both are pretty outdated devices but fully operational. Apple is definitely not the company to be blamed for making "throw away" devices.
Name a brand thats better in providing software updates and security patches for their fleet of phones.
Repairability is a fair complaint - but the initial lifespan of $android is max 2 years. I consider it broken once it does not receive security updates. So $android phone is “broken” after 2 years.
> but the initial lifespan of $android is max 2 years. I consider it broken once it does not receive security updates.
If that's your definition of a lifespan, "max 2 years" is absolutely not true. Android has two types of support: new major releases and security patches.
An average Android usually supports new major Android releases for 2 years, but security patches usually go longer. Not as long as an iPhone, but more like 3-5 years.
iPhone 6s (released September 2015) - ~ 8 years and going
Nexus 5X & Nexus 6P (released September 2015) - last update January 2019 [1] ~ 2.25 years
Pixel & Pixel XL (released October 2016) - 2019 (can't find a good reference) ~ 3 years
Pixel 2 (released October 2017) - December 2020 [2] ~ 3.3 years
> Not as long as an iPhone, but more like 3-5 years.
Pixels starting from 6 -> 5 years.
Recent Samsungs -> 4 years.
Fairphone 2 (Dec 2015) -> lost support last month.
Things have improved since Nexus 5X, and even that one had a year longer support than your "max 2 years". I'm not saying it's better than an iPhone, I'm saying make a fair comparison.
Exactly this. I spent more on Android phones over time than I ever spent on iPhones. Between the better resale value and longer support, it just turns out to be cheaper to spend a few extra bucks at time of purchase.
This isn't a comparison. I'm making the point that they're bullshitting you about being some big proponent of "saving the planet". They do nothing that doesn't increase the money in their pockets.
I have an iPhone. I'm just sick of their hypocrisy. This is nothing but marketing to get you to buy more product from them. "oh apple is so good to the planet, so security oriented, they really value your privacy"
I’m not sure how to tell you, but if I’m looking for a phone from a company that destroys the planet a bit less than the others, that cares about security a bit more than the others and that values my privacy a bit more, Apple offering such a phone is not some dark marketing ploy, but literally the supply to my demand. It’s the free market actually working.
It's not 'throw away', it's just (over a couple generations, admittedly) they are objectively better. People want them. The fact that they are being recycled mitigates the horrors of technology improving.
Efficiency is always a big deal and at Apple's scale any slice of a percent is great. The supply chain for these materials seems to have predominately shifted to an internal resource as opposed to an external cost variable. This process also started small and slow but is starting to snowball. Apple has developed a supply chain that is efficient and still gaining efficiencies.
Not to mention all the social and environmental issues.
Well, hmm - is it? I'd naively imagine cobalt content is proportional to battery size, and while Apple sells a lot of devices they aren't large energy-hungry ones.
Surely far more of the world's battery production (by watt-hours or kg, take your pick) goes into cars and grid storage than iPhones?
8Wh is exceptionally low (even guessing), it's just 2.22Ah for a Li-Ion (cobalt based). IPhone battery is 3.2Ah ~ 11.5Wh.
52 Wh for the Mac; that's a rather low estimate for a Mac, it has 3 cells in series, likely 2 or 3 in parallel. 2.8-3Ah per cell (at 3.6 nominal voltage)
Depends on the model, the SE is 7.82 Wh and that model is still on sale.
But even doubling the combined total, let alone a mere extra 3 Wh * 232e6 = 696 MWh = 0.7 GWh, Apple is still a small battery user compared to Tesla cars.
Most EVs worldwide are powered by cobalt-free LFP batteries. A decent fraction of EVs sold in the US are also LFP powered (all standard range Model 3 & Y). Cobalt is a short-term problem that'll be a memory a few years from now.
When run at full-steam, MacBooks, iPads and iPhones can churn significant amount of data for their sizes, and use significant amount of energy. The batteries sold by Apple are pretty dense for their sizes, and they sell a lot of them.
Sure, I'm not hating on Apple - it's a perfectly reasonable thing for them to do. But I'd question how much of global cobalt production was ever going into macbooks/iphones rather than electric cars, lawnmowers, hoovers and whatever else.
This sets a good precedent but we'd need other manufacturers (who I'd guess are more cost-conscious) to follow suit before it changes much.
I think the title should say „Apple will order from 2025 only batteries with 100 percent recycled cobalt“?
I’m not aware that Apple has noteworthy production facilities. Other than IBM, Dell, Lenovo, TSMC, Intel, Samsung. With Samsung as exception, which produces literally everything.
Then again, if we're to talk about hypocrisy, the cobalt impact on environment (not to mention child, including slave-slave, labor) is downplayed towards token "green" PR.
(And "recycled" cobalt can just be any previous cycle's "new" cobalt, meaning still driving cobalt mining forever - it's just an accounting trick to make it appear less impactful. Except if they promise to only use cobalt mined before 2025 in perpetuity).
How is it an accounting trick? Are you saying there would be no change in the amount of cobalt mined annually if Apple instead said they would use only newly mined cobalt?
Let’s say the world currently uses 90% virgin Cobalt, and 10% recycled Cobalt.
Let’s assume Apple decides to only use recycled Cobalt.
Q1: Is there any change to the amount of recycled Cobalt?
Q2: Is Apple a kind, environmentally-friendly, generous, caring corporation?
Q3: If Apple decided to use batteries without Cobalt, would that decrease Cobalt mining?
Q4: Could Apple reduce the number of phones they produce (decreasing Cobalt usage), and would Apple do that for environmental reasons?
Q5: Let’s assume their new policy actually makes zero difference to the amount of Cobalt mining: would Apple still claim to be environmentally conscious in their marketing?
That’s a lot of hand waving and moralizing to dodge the question. I’m fine hating Apple, but I don’t feel the need to insist that them increasing the average number of proudest a cobalt atom goes through will have no impact on demand for newly mined cobalt.
100% fine if you choose to see this policy as further evidence of their moral irredeemability. But let’s be honest with the math and how supply chains work?
I am wondering whether this is smoke-and-mirrors greenwashing with a side of deflection, versus a significant boost to Cobalt recycling.
Economics:
(A) If 10% of Cobalt is already recycled, but only 5% is used by companies that want to advertise their green credentials, then there is unlikely to be much extra demand for recycled Cobalt so approximately zero extra production of it,
(B) If corporations are only willing to pay a little extra for recycled Cobalt, then there is little extra production of recycled Cobalt. The price will clear near the 10% usage mark.
(C) Even at a high price for recycled Cobalt, if there is a high marginal cost for increasing recycling then little extra Cobalt will be recycled (e.g. if we are already recycling most of what economically can be).
(D) Without very detailed PhD level analysis, the dollars spent is the best proxy for ecological damage. A high price for recycled Cobalt might be doing nothing for the environment, or even be damaging the environment more.
> But let’s be honest with the math and how supply chains work?
I am trying to be. I do question whether Apple Inc is trying to be.
I do hope that Apple’s efforts do improve the world. Apple are one of the biggest economic actors on the planet, so they have the real capacity to make a true positive ecological difference.
Longer software updates to extend device lifetimes would be a true signal they cared about the environment. For example I have seen too many iPads that become obsolete even though the hardware is still working great. If Apple don’t use signals like that, we can presume that they care more about profits. I am 100% fine if Apple choose to see profits as policy, so long as they are honest about it.
I am definitely not a specialist in this area, yet to me there are obvious gaping holes in their narrative which make it seem like they are performing environmental theatre instead of ecologically sound engineering. It is carefully constructed advertising - whether there is any meat in it is the question.
Whether we can discover the underlying truth is another matter.
> hand waving
Perhaps you could criticise my points, rather than make a hand waving argument.
Also, will Apple even continue to use "100% recycle cobalt" if their production grows in some market segment (say the "Apple car" eventually arrives) and their cobalt needs increase beyond that? Not a chance.
They still do - they said about half of their cars don't. Still:
Huayou Cobalt will supply processed cobalt for batteries to Tesla from July 1, 2022, to the end of 2025, according to the filing. The miner specified that the prices of the products will be “subject to market prices for nickel, cobalt and manganese, as well as refining fees.”
I'm saying "100% percent recycled" still means new cobalt will continue to be mined, including for future Apple use. Apple just offsets using the newly mined by 1-2-3 years and calls it a green solution.
An, with you there. To the extent Apple claimed this policy would result in the total cessation of all cobalt mining, they were wrong to do so. It is merely a reduction in demand for newly mined cobalt, not a complete elimination across the entire economy.
I think this should create a substantial market for recycled cobalt, which will drive up the level of cobalt recycling, which means there would be less actual cobalt mining.
> Except if they promise to only use cobalt mined before 2025 in perpetuity
They’re not in a situation to promise anything like this, though. Nobody is going to ask when the cobalt was mined when you bring a device for recycling. Of course, recycling is not perfect and not using any would be better. But it’s still much, much better than not doing any recycling.
Next thing Apple needs to do is setup MagSafe batteries to act as the primary battery for iPhones.
Right now using a magsafe battery charges the built in battery which is then drained by iPhone usage. Ideally what would happen instead is iPhone usage would use the magsafe battery first, then the built in battery.
The result of this is that magsafe batteries effectively are equivalent as replaceable ones.
I don't think the current setup is notably different from what you're proposing.
The phone does use the MagSafe battery first, it just uses it through the internal battery, but that is just a matter of semantics. It shouldn't have a notable impact on battery health.
The critical importance here is if you plan on keeping your phone for a long time, a degraded internal battery is fundamentally the limit under the current scheme.
Or to put it another way, imagine you had a battery that only lasted a single minute, and a magsafe battery that lasts a full day. How long is your phone going to last? What will happen is that both your internal battery and magsafe will be drained, with the magsafe being drained the most. Eventually your internal battery will die, and so will your phone.
The other issue with using the internal battery (pass through, or charge) is that you're wearing it down more.
Li-ion battery degradation is minimal, or even negligible when they aren't cycled across different capacity ranges AFAIK. What that means is that current charging the battery while it is getting discharged at a similar rate (which usually means a constant battert voltage) doesn't induce wear in the same way as charging the battery from a capacity of 10% to 100% (or even from 75% to 80%) does.
But that could be different when that constant charge/discharge is happening at high capacity levels, lithium-ion batteries are weirder when they are at their maximim voltage. My knowledge is rusty at this point so let me know if I got any of this wrong.
Batteries don't like staying at 0% or 100%. They don't like extreme temperatures. And lastly, they don't like cycles.
I'm not entirely sure how the internal power routing works, but my understanding is that it's not adding cycles to your battery if you're using the power as it's being added, even if it's going through the battery.
You'll likely see more degradation from the wireless charging waste heat effecting the battery.
But doesn't using one battery through another effectively mean that you're using both batteries in terms of wear and tear? If the phone drains the internal battery and the magsafe battery is charging the internal battery, to me that sounds like both batteries are in use experiencing normal wear. If that's not how it works, I'd be curious to hear how it does work.
People want wireless charging, that isn't changing. MagSafe is a more efficient version of that compared to basic Qi charging like every other device offers because the magnets ensure perfect alignment.
The point isn’t about avoiding criticism. The point is that Apple proclaims that they care about eco-friendliness and then introduces features that are the opposite. “Might as well have a nice feature” translates to “might as well be eco-unfriendly”.
I’m confused. Isn’t that what happens? Some portion goes to operating the phone and the rest to charging the battery? How does it work differently?
It doesn’t hook into the same charging system the phone uses for normal? Is that special for MagSafe? I don’t really understand how it’s different and can’t find anything online to read more about this.
Correct, just like with a power cable. The phone needs to have some charge for basic operational safety. e.g. what happens if the user suddenly unplugs. Or are you saying MagSafe can't charge a dead phone?
That’s all cool. And then I go to a supermarket to buy an eco-friendly toothbrush and the cheapest one will cost twice as the best plastic-made. And I vote with my wallet and my perception of what is good for the longevity of my teeth.
Turn around and you’ll notice the same pattern in packaging of candies and biscuits, water and milk bottles, pretty much everything. There will be products packaged or made of non-plastic of some sort but they will be in the minority, niche and more expensive.
While plastic and other non-recyclable materials are more favorable from the economic and regulatory perspective any type of “eco-friendly” material and production cycle will be losing this race.
Kudos to Apple though for setting up their own standards and continuously raising the bar!
Apple claims carbon neutral since 2020, while its global chain are set to be decarbonized by 2030. This measure seems to be a huge boost, especially considering the cobalt supply chain was quite a significant contributor to the antithesis.
I was already wondering how this applied to their recycled aluminum claim, but is there actually enough recycled aluminum / cobalt of sufficient quality to go in laptops in the world that it would be feasible to scale beyond just Apple? Is it just a matter of price, or has Apple - as with some components/materials - completely taken the option off the market?
Well, in this page a member shows that copper is used three time as much as cobalt in car batteries, and only a few days ago a documentary emerged about the copper extraction industry in Chile as a barricaded enclave causing high human costs.
And even more recently the moves in the geopolitical game made the extraction of rare earths and its environmental (and social, etc.) costs a renewedly current topic.
I am not sure that cobalt has a specially bad place in the whole context of extraction. (Apart from the non irrelevant fact that 'cobalt' comes from "kobold", because its ore is toxic.)
What exactly is the battery chemistry of the batteries Apple is using? LiCo?!? LiNiMnCoO2? LiNiCoAlO2? I can't find the answer anywhere other than "Lithium ion."
> What benefit is there to Apple in publishing this information?
Precisely the same benefit brought from honesty, transparency and full disclosure, and whatever benefit there is in instilling faith and trust in a company that does not hide or obfuscate details of critical importance to the safety of their customers.
I like buying supply chain stocks, I went to find out who apple is buying cobalt from and apparently it's mostly directly from the miners, pretty cool!
Recycling cobalt batteries can have environmental impacts if not done properly. The process can result in the emission of pollutants, including greenhouse gases, toxic metals, and hazardous waste. Improper disposal of the waste generated during recycling can also have harmful effects on the environment. Not to mention recycling cobalt batteries requires a significant amount of energy. The process of recovering cobalt from batteries involves crushing, shredding, and melting the battery components, which can consume a lot of energy and contribute to carbon emissions.
Lithium car battery weighs 450kg. It has about 11 kg of lithium, 14 kg of cobalt, 27 kg of nickel, more than 40 kg of copper, and 50 kg of graphite as well as about 181 kg of steel, aluminum, and plastics.
LFP batteries are becoming much more common in EVs, mostly due to lower cost. They are a bit lower performance than NMC and NCA cells, but cheaper - and they don't use cobalt.
EDIT: for example Tesla Model 3 Standard Range uses LFP chemistry.
There are also some sodium ion batteries on the road now. Their performance isn't stellar but it keeps cost down. LFP is indeed getting more popular. A lot of the more advanced chemistries also don't use cobalt, or use less of it.
Cobalt sourcing is of course an issue. But it's worth noting that it's usage is not unique to just lithium batteries. A lot of cobalt is consumed and not recycled in the oil industry and it's used in a variety of other industries as well. Why is it that child labor is only ever an issue in the context of batteries?
And another point is that of course not all cobalt mines are operated by child labor. Sourcing responsibly is an option if you need cobalt. You might have to pay extra for it.
And another point is that cobalt isn't by far the only thing that is commonly sourced in ways that perhaps aren't that nice. There's a wide variety of minerals, oil, etc. that are also produced under circumstances that you might rightfully criticize for being similarly inhumane, dirty, etc. And a lot of that finds its ways into global supply chains.
There's a bit of selection bias going on here. When it's batteries it's an outrage. When it's fuel you buy at the pump, you don't give it a second thought. Was it maybe some Nigerian oil or did it come from Iran, Russia, or some Canadian tar field? Did they use some Cobalt from the Congo to refine it? Most people neither know nor care. The point isn't whether there is or isn't child labor involved but that mostly people don't care enough to bother finding out.
> not a publicly traded company making "forward looking statements" about 18 mounts out
Moreover one that successfully launched a decades-long product plan in M1. If long-term planning is fundamentally shocking to you, it might say more about you than whatever you’re criticising.
More greenwashing garbage from Apple, a company that has been building devices with notoriously and deliberately poor repairability for years, and more recently, has been taking a giant shit on first-sale doctrine by refusing to provide any way for the new *legal* owners of decommissioned corporate hardware to de-list said hardware from MDM (org. device management), leading to entire laptops becoming soft-bricked e-waste well before the end of their reasonable lifespan.
From what I’ve read, Apple can and has worked with third parties to unlock MDM-associated and activation locked devices, but only after a certain period of time and reasonable proof of legitimate ownership to try to avoid creating a pipeline to “legitimize” stolen hardware, which doesn’t seem particularly unreasonable. There’s no point in having a locking feature if they’ll roll over and unlock it for just anybody.
"Reasonable proof of legitimate ownership" translates to "record of first-sale purchase directly from Apple" only, from every example I have seen.
They have steadfastly refused to differentiate between the concepts of abandoned/donated devices vs. stolen ones -- very convenient for them, as it drives more sales of new devices and increasingly hamstrings the used market.
> They have steadfastly refused to differentiate between the concepts of abandoned/donated devices vs. stolen ones
This is a valid complaint, but at the same time that differentiation can be messy and difficult to systematize in a way that's not enabling thieves.
Something I've advocated for in the past is a feature in the firmware that allows new owners to request an unlock from the original owner, which could be as simple as an email and/or SMS that the original owner can answer yes/no. This isn't a perfect fix, but it takes Apple out of the loop outside of acting as a relay, and if the original owner in fact abandoned or donated the device in question they'll have no qualms with unlocking it for the new owner.
We've had trouble since they retired of some MDM and Server OS services in recent years. We can only get support for serial numbers we can prove we purchased, and our Apple corporate accounts manager rep says that their corporate purchase history back-end software only goes back 18 months. I'm with 'Wingman4l7' on this being greenwashing nonsense.
So what would you have Apple do instead when a device is attached to an account? Allow Apple a backdoor inside every device they sell to remove MDM and/or Find My?
I'm not sure why this is a disliked post? Wouldn't mind a clue. I'm referring to the way they usually announce products right before they go up for sale, or announce software changes right before beta.
Ecologically, our high-tech civilization is not sustainable, so this is feel-good designed to market complacency and keep the good times rolling while it's possible. People don't like being reminded of that, hence downvotes.
The cobalt is either recycled (100%), or it's not (0%).
How much of this "100% recycled cobalt" makes up a single battery?
Is it 10%? 1%? 99%?
Is the battery 10% made of 100% recycled cobalt, and 90% made of non-recycled material?
I hate this "100% recycled" wordplay. Any reasonable person would interpret it to mean "the batteries are 100% recycled" which seems to not be the case, given how sly they are being with the description.
Still, kudos to the recycling effort, but don't try to trick me.
It's the same trick nearly every company in the US plays with "made from 100% reclaimed ocean plastic."
Sure, it is made from plastic that 100% was reclaimed from the ocean. But if that plastic only makes up 1% of the item, and the rest is 99% non-recycled plastic, then you're effectively just tricking any individual not paying attention.
It seems to read reasonably unambiguously to me, I think. I interpreted it to mean:
Of the cobalt that is used in making the batteries, all of it came from sources that had previously been used in something else, subsequent to it having been mined originally. None of it came from cobalt where it was mined and then this is its first use in a product.
And then there being no other claims about the recycled-ness or lack thereof about the rest of the battery.
Really? I feel like the interpretation is pretty obvious, that all of the cobalt in the batteries is recycled - but no promises or indicators about how much of the battery consists of cobalt.
It doesn't feel like trickery to me, but it certainly doesn't paint the full picture.
Is English your first language? This is pretty clear to mean that 100% of the cobalt used in the production is recycled and not sourced from outside their supply. If their production used some recycled cobalt and that filled in gaps using sourced cobalt, then that wouldn't be 100% recycled.
If you click the header of this page, you can read an entire article titled “Apple will use 100 percent recycled cobalt in batteries by 2025”, and find the answer to your question.
Also, the phrase “use 100 percent recycled Foo”, though in principle ambiguous, AFAIK is only used to mean “100% of the FOO we use is recycled”.
This entire discussion is full of very interesting facts and just useless opinions.
what's a better way to run an economy? every consumer of food goes out into the fields to pick what they will eat? Or there are specialized pickers who pick the food and drop it off in bulk near the people who will eat it? And on the other end of that process, should we all dig our own latrines? Or have a toilets+sewer system run by professionals?
cobalt is a commodity product. when you melt chunks of cobalt together, you can't tell where the cobalt came from any more. Who give a shit how Apple handles its cobalt? If it's doing it on a large scale, economics will dictate what is cost effective because how the economy handles cobalt is actually important, but how individual players do is completely unimportant. If it's important how certain waste is handled, yes, set up waste streams so that experts can make sure all the parts of an old phone are handled, don't as laypeople discuss the cobalt separately from the lithium, lead, etc.
I'm just pointing it out because for a community of people who take smug self-assurance in both their technical prowess and ability to be rational and unswayed by emotion, you all know fuck-all about economics, wear your <3 recycling hearts on your sleeves, and have your heads in your asshats.
Being drawn in to this discussion, you've most-all been bamboozled by PR/marketing despite all your ad-blockers and sophistication. If we've agreed that specialists will pick and deliver the food, it's interesting to learn about it, yes, but do we need to hear how each other feels about that?
> The development of fiber alternatives for packaging components like screen films, wraps, and foam cushioning has kept Apple on track toward this ambitious goal. To address the remaining 4 percent plastic in the company’s packaging footprint, Apple is innovating to replace labels, lamination, and other small uses. In the last year, Apple developed a custom printer to introduce digital printing directly onto the boxes of iPhone 14 and iPhone 14 Pro, eliminating the need for most labels. And a new overprint varnish found in iPad Air, iPad Pro, and Apple Watch Series 8 packaging replaces the polypropylene plastic lamination found on boxes and packaging components.