Apple will use 100 percent recycled cobalt in batteries by 2025

https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2023/04/apple-will-use-100-percent-recycled-cobalt-in-batteries-by-2025/

by feross • 3 years ago

445 253 3 years ago

wuming2• 3 years ago

With 70% of revenues from hundred million battery powered devices a year is a big deal.

mocko2• 3 years ago

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?

bayindirh• 3 years ago

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.

It will definitely add up.

lockhouse• 3 years ago

Apparently an iPhone uses about 8 grams of cobalt.

Considering how many units are shipped annually, that adds up to quite a lot actually.

alfor• 3 years ago

The applications that don’t need the highest energy density are shifting away from cobalt.

ben_w2• 3 years ago

Hmm…

232 million iPhones, 61 million iPads and 26 million Mac and MacBook…

- (last year) https://www.businessofapps.com/data/apple-statistics/

I'll assume the batteries are 8 Wh for iPhone, 30 Wh for iPad, 52 Wh for the Macs[0]:

= (232 * 8) + (61 * 30) + (26 * 52) = 5038 MWh = 5 GWh

Which is more than I was expecting, but at the same time Tesla is on track for 1.8 million cars this year at a minimum of 54 kWh each = 97.2 GWh

So, yeah; good on Apple, more of this please from other electronics companies, still tiny compared to automotive.

[0] plausible guesses only because I don't have a breakdown of sales by model and I don't care enough to go looking

rootusrootus2• 3 years ago

goes into 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.

detourdog• 3 years ago

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.

known• 3 years ago

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.

HPsquared3• 3 years ago

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.

alwayslikethis• 3 years ago

They are also notably much safer, at a cost of much worse energy density.

jillesvangurp• 3 years ago

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.

ho_schi• 3 years ago

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.

coldtea4• 3 years ago

Well, title doesn't say "make", says "use".

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).

brookst3• 3 years ago

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?

jmull2• 3 years ago

just an accounting trick

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.

That’s not just an accounting trick.

kergonath• 3 years ago

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.

Maursault3• 3 years ago

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."

HPsquared3• 3 years ago

I don't know the answer, but probably NCA or NMC. Won't be LFP.

Maursault3• 3 years ago

That really settles it.

We shouldn't have to guess. It should be known, within the first couple search results. What's the point of not revealing that?

ThrowawayTestr• 3 years ago

Fun fact: cobalt is an essential mineral, it's used in vitamin B12!

steve_adams_862• 3 years ago

Related fun fact: the two types of B12 you typically find in stores are cyanocobalamin and methylcobalamin. Cobalt is practically in the names!

Danieru• 3 years ago

This is rather brilliant as an announcement.

Cobalt was/is the most conflict associated of the battery inputs. Thus R&D has pushed cobalt content lower and lower over the years.

The net result is old batteries contain tons more cobalt by weight than these new batteries Apple is expecting to use in 2025.

Of course I feel remiss not to point out how Apple is the party responsible for killing the user replaceable battery.

azinman2• 3 years ago

If Apple hadn’t existed, do you think smartphones would all have user replaceable batteries now?

lancesells• 3 years ago

It might have been slower. They seem to introduce these types of things first (maybe second) and then the industry follows.

danaris2• 3 years ago

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.

jl64• 3 years ago

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.

CorrectHorseBat2• 3 years ago

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?

ISL• 3 years ago

We have a battery-recycling bowl at home as well as drawers holding old phones.

My guess is that batteries are more-often recycled than phones/laptops, even just on data-privacy issues alone.

sbuk9• 3 years ago

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.

RNAlfons• 3 years ago

Apple could just reward returns of old batteries.

It shouldn't be that hard for a company with so much know how and control over their products.

totalZero• 3 years ago

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.

wittenbunk• 3 years ago

Is this satire?

foooobaba2• 3 years ago

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.

iamerroragent7• 3 years ago

Instead of replacing a battery people replace the device.

Is that a net win in your book?

pomatius• 3 years ago

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.

endisneigh3• 3 years ago

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.

vlovich1232• 3 years ago

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.

endisneigh3• 3 years ago

To my knowledge if you had a dead battery, and used magsafe you still wouldn't be able to use your phone.

ezfe2• 3 years ago

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.

nerdponx• 3 years ago

It shouldn't have a notable impact on battery health.

Is that actually true? Lithium batteries seem kind of fussy.

JustSomeNobody2• 3 years ago

Why wouldn't it?

endisneigh3• 3 years ago

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.

Maybe the behavior is different in an iPhone 14?

madmads• 3 years ago

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.

JustSomeNobody2• 3 years ago

This would be cool.

layer86• 3 years ago

MagSafe wastes energy due to its inefficiency. It’s hard to believe Apple’s eco-friendly aspirations when they introduce such features.

somehnguy6• 3 years ago

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.

Gigachad4• 3 years ago

The energy used to power your phone is completely trivial. Just one trip in your car would use more than your lifetime phone usage.

Gigachad4• 3 years ago

The internal battery is replaceable though. The store will put a new one in for less than the cost of one of those MagSafe batteries.

RaoulP• 3 years ago

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.

lloydatkinson2• 3 years ago

Sounds like Apple's previous work with printers has come in handy again

troymc2• 3 years ago

I was curious about that and found this nice Wikipedia list of all Apple printers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Apple_printers

philistine5• 3 years ago

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.

alberth• 3 years ago

Most people don’t realize how much machinery Apple creates for their vendors to use.

michelb• 3 years ago

Indeed. I would love to see all the specialised equipment they've designed.

msoad• 3 years ago

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.

anonymouskimmer• 3 years ago

I would guess many of those containers are reused.

hackmiester• 3 years ago

Sure, but, they control what happens next. Whereas by including plastic in the packaging, it's practically guaranteed to go straight into the trash.

mrexroad• 3 years ago

Source?

DrThunder7• 3 years ago

Maybe stop making a throw away phone first if you're actually interested in being "green".

rcme• 3 years ago

Apple has best-in-class device support and lifespan, no?

iameli• 3 years ago

I'm sympathetic to waterproofing concerns about easily-swappable batteries but this is definitely why Right-to-Repair is incredibly important

morkalork• 3 years ago

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.

jl64• 3 years ago

iPhones are LTS devices. My 8+ is still going strong and fully supported after nearly 6 years - with one battery replacement.

lloydatkinson2• 3 years ago

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?

layer86• 3 years ago

“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.

powellzer• 3 years ago

Not to be pedantic but the iPhone 8 came out in late 2017. Still a good lifespan!

alex_sf2• 3 years ago

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.

JaggerJo3• 3 years ago

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.

rootusrootus2• 3 years ago

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.

input_sh2• 3 years ago

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.

DrThunder7• 3 years ago

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"

jmull2• 3 years ago

I think iPhones are the least “throw away” of the phones, aren’t they?

vezuchyy• 3 years ago

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.

ChancyChance• 3 years ago

iphone 7 representin'

Maybe customers should reevaluate their shopping habit impact on the environment and stop chasing the next new thing?

tacynicaltake92• 3 years ago

Here is a cynical take: Cobalt shortage.

"Battery technology and recycling alone will not save the electric mobility transition from future cobalt shortages" https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-29022-z

Nothing drives a corporation to recycle and reuse more than the shortage of raw materials.

why_only_15• 3 years ago

why is this bad? if there's a shortage it sounds actively good because that means more cobalt for other people.

tacynicaltake92• 3 years ago

Cynical take: Greenwashing.

They don't mention cobalt shortage at all. Making it sound like the environment is their primary goal.

kevincox• 3 years ago

Also by announcing it loudly now they are probably helping recyclers to get funding and start increasing production.

Of course 2025 isn't very far away so it is probably only a small impact.

JanneVee• 3 years ago

So I'll just leave this, it seems that people aren't aware of it: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250284297/cobaltred

mdp20212• 3 years ago

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.)

mdp20212• 3 years ago

...Someboy passed by, he had a working mouse and a broken keyboard. Elaborate.

Wingman4l73• 3 years ago

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.

kitsunesoba2• 3 years ago

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.

Wingman4l73• 3 years ago

"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.

desksplosion• 3 years ago

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.

philistine5• 3 years ago

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?

Wingman4l73• 3 years ago

Activation locks are all server-side; they control if these expire or are enabled -- so they already have a backdoor inside every device, essentially.

aziaziazi• 3 years ago

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.

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2019/dec/16/a...

Edit:typo

hammock• 3 years ago

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

gumballindie• 3 years ago

By that time they would sold, and thus damaged the environment, so many phones that they can just recycle them and still turn a good profit.

paulkrush• 3 years ago

They can do this as their percent of world total use of these products shrinks and as the market has maturing waste streams.

AnonMO• 3 years ago

based on recent shipment data from q4 2022 their global market share actually increased it actually bounced of the lows in 2020 and is still trending upwards and is at 10 year highs. >https://www.counterpointresearch.com/apple-iphone-market-sha... >https://www.counterpointresearch.com/global-smartphone-share...

philistine5• 3 years ago

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.

jollyllama2• 3 years ago

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.

alpaca1282• 3 years ago

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.

alden5• 3 years ago

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!

https://support.apple.com/self-service-repair

mcast• 3 years ago

Who’s the target demographic for this? Surely they don’t want a 16 year old who has never used a screwdriver before.

hra5th• 3 years ago

I am surprised to see the same user post

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

Ntrails• 3 years ago

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

audunw• 3 years ago

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.

rasz2• 3 years ago

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 :)))

easeout2• 3 years ago

Environmental impact is one of the few kinds of news they announce while it's still a plan and not yet an accomplishment.

easeout2• 3 years ago

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.

CatWChainsaw• 3 years ago

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.

_cenw• 3 years ago

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?

fortran77• 3 years ago

Think of all the extra money they can make replacing batteries more frequently!

txsoftwaredev• 3 years ago

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.

2bitencryption• 3 years ago

What's "100 percent recycled cobalt"?

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.

ye-olde-sysrq• 3 years ago

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.

geewee• 3 years ago

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.

dpkonofa2• 3 years ago

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.

Someone• 3 years ago

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”.

neom• 3 years ago

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!

abhayhegde• 3 years ago

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.

bobse• 3 years ago

They won't. Sage.

fsckboy• 3 years ago

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?

nrvn• 3 years ago

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!

snvzz• 3 years ago

And won't let you replace the battery yourself

... for eco reasons.

junon• 3 years ago

Good. Cobalt mining is still a rich avenue for cheap child labor in underdeveloped areas that most major tech manufacturers still exploit.

wooque• 3 years ago

Penny wise, pound foolish. The best they could do to save the environment would be to improve on repairability and stop producing e-waste.

Apple will use 100 percent recycled cobalt in batteries by 2025

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