At the March 21 event on Monday, besides the much expected 9.7-inch iPad Pro and iPhone SE, Apple Corp. has unveiled its iPhone recycling robot called Liam.
According to Techno Buffalo, at the launch event held at Apple's Cupertino, California headquarters, the company's representatives spent time early on in the event talking about the company's impact on the environment. In order to show the company dismantles old devices for recycling, a one-minute video was shown at the event. Apple's video highlights Liam in action as it completely disassemble an iPhone in parts that can be used in other products.
The robotic system called Liam is also able to recover valuable materials for recycling, such as tungsten and silver. By developing the iPhone recycling robot Liam the high-tech giant Apple aims to address criticism that its devices are so tightly constructed that their parts are difficult to disassemble, reuse and refurbish.
Lisa Jackson, Apples vice president of environment, policy and social initiatives, declared that in its future products the company hopes to reuse more materials. She added that the robotic system will push the technology sector toward more recycling. Since reuse and recycling have become so important, Apple's goal is to create breakthroughs that allow the company to use those high quality materials in their own products, according to Jackson.
According to International Business Times India, Liam has been under development for nearly three years and started to operate at full capacity in February. The iPhone recycling robot will initially focus on the iPhone 6. In the future Apple plans to expand the system in order to make it able to handle different devices and recover more resources.
Liam can take apart one iPhone 6 every 11 seconds in order to recover tungsten, copper, aluminum, cobalt, tin, silver and gold parts. Working uninterrupted at this rate, Liam can handle just a few million phones per year. This represents only a small fraction of over 231 million phones sold by the company in the year 2015.
