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This is a great goal to have and one that more manufacturers should have. However, what I find funny is that people will openly support this and say how great it is, but if it means an initial rise in costs of products, they will be furious.
Look at all the outrage over laptops being thinner and more power-efficient.
 
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They started with the new iPad.
Take the case of iPad Air, put in the A9 recycled from old iPhone 6s and voila, you have a brand new iPad :D

Now the serious part of the post.
I'd like to be able to take my Apple product the AS and have it refurbished with the latest logic board. Think about the Mac, you have a rMBP and the display is still great, but you'd like some more RAM and a faster CPU. Why buy a brand new model if you can get a refurbished one for a lower price?
It would be harder with iPhone since they keep adding features, for example 6 and 6s are basically the same phone but you can't just put A9 into the iPhone 6, you have 3D touch and a new camera, but it would work for the Mac and maybe for the iPad as well. And think about the iMac, the display can serve you for years, but sometimes you need an upgrade and they don't allow you to change the storage and the CPU, they started to solder the RAM as well. That is not good for the environment, you end up with products you can't upgrade easily.
 
I'm all for this but how about starting with self-upgradable memory for MacBooks?

See if Apple was serious about this stuff rather than just trying to earn brownie points with "pro-science" millennials, there are a ton of things they could easily do before pledging to stop mining entirely.
 
I applaud Apple for this. Continuing to hollow out the planet beneath us can only lead to eventual disaster. I also applaud them for having the sense not to make Apple products easier to repair. Yes it makes good business sense for Apple as you will need to have cover, replacement devices or hefty repair charges, but it also makes sense from an environmental viewpoint. If you make Apple products easier to repair say in the home, then you will see a huge rise in cheap poor quality parts coming to market generally from Asian markets where they have been mined, in terrible working conditions and a cheaply made poor quality product is produced.

If Apple made repairing devices easier we would see a massive increase in mining globally, the opposite of what is wanted to be achieved.
 
"Climate change"

I assume you're one those guys that put things in quotes when they don't actually understand them. I'm a climate scientist, so please fire away. Ask me what you don't understand about the science behind the current changes in our climate and how natural causes alone cannot explain them. And how we need to take human factors into account to explain what we're observing today. And how our studies came to the understanding of Earth's climate of the past 2 million years, and taking into account what we've learned from that, how we concluded we do have some major challenges ahead of us.

I don't believe in climate change and am dead set against "the liberal agenda". Further, I believe Lisa Jackson behaved abominably while at EPA and it is shameful for Apple to employ her. This is a gimmick, sort of like Apple's 100% renewable energy posture. Still, it is not a harmful gimmick, except perhaps in respect of higher prices. And you are correct that being resourceful is a good thing. For example, one day the plastic detritus floating around the oceans will be recognized as an extractable resource, and there will be drone vehicles skimming up plastic to recycle, like great baleen whales gargling on plankton.

You forgot the /Sarcasm at the end of your post. Otherwise people might think you're actually serious.
 
While 100% recycled products is a romantic idea, it is also physically impossible for everyone to do. Even if there was absolutely no waste and everything on the planet was recycled (something I personally hope we eventually achieve!!) that would still only account for something along the lines of 60% of the global demand for materials.

Don't get me wrong, I commend apple for this push, just don't get all up in arms when mining continues to be a thing.

Ironically, both Steve Jobs & Tim Cook now are rapidly creating disposable products with no upgrade options.

It's like the ultimate social progressive hypocrite. We're doing so much to MEAN WELL, but in reality DOING NOTHING.
 
I'd hate to rain on Apple's parade, but a significant chunk of all base metal produced in the U.S and Europe are already recycled for the simple reason that recycled metals are cheaper than new production. Being considerably more environmentally friendly than new metal made from ore is merely an added benefit.

When it comes to exact figures I think steel is already at something like 70% meaning that more steel is recycled than created from new iron ore. Aluminum and copper, both requiring a lot of energy to produce from raw ore, aren't that far behind either and if I'm not mistaken the main reason why they're not as heavily recycled is that scrap with them just isn't available in the same kind of quantities as scrap steel.

In Asia however most of the base metals produced are still made from raw ore as there just isn't as much scrap metal to recycle due to large scale industrialization taking place later than in the U.S and Europe.

As weird as it sounds, pretty much any company can start using nothing but recycled base metals purely by accident if they buy their base metals from Europe or the U.S.
 
Well I'm sure this is a good start, but let's not forget that recycling mostly means people in China or India, holding components in their bare feet or heating them up over little fires to extract the metals. Breathing in toxic fumes and having a short life. Often it's kids doing it. If you do some research into the mountains of old computers and the people that live on them, you'll see we have along way to go before we can rejoice and all feel smug about what we are doing for the planet.
Furthermore, whilst I'm here, I'd like to point out that the massive increase in 'renewable energy' over the last few years is largely due to the inclusion of wood products and bio fuels. Wood burning power stations and bio-diesel may look good for the figures but the particle emissions they produce are terrible for the planet and certainly worse than natural gas.
 
It is my understanding Apple had denied the use of mining for raw materials in the BBC Panorama programme 'Apples Broken Promises' which makes for some unsettling viewing
 
The only "Bad Parts" I've ever had in a Mac, came from Apple, at highly inflated prices I might ad.
 
Well I'm sure this is a good start, but let's not forget that recycling mostly means people in China or India, holding components in their bare feet or heating them up over little fires to extract the metals. Breathing in toxic fumes and having a short life. Often it's kids doing it. If you do some research into the mountains of old computers and the people that live on them, you'll see we have along way to go before we can rejoice and all feel smug about what we are doing for the planet.
Furthermore, whilst I'm here, I'd like to point out that the massive increase in 'renewable energy' over the last few years is largely due to the inclusion of wood products and bio fuels. Wood burning power stations and bio-diesel may look good for the figures but the particle emissions they produce are terrible for the planet and certainly worse than natural gas.
Then what's needed is a new technology that does not need to extracted rare earth minerals to make electronics. Only if the west would address this need since they hold all of the IP for the current electronics.
 
This is by far the best thing Cook has achieved in his place at Apple.

His guidance regarding the Mac has been awful, the iPhone has been above average, the services/ecosystem part so and so, but ethically its 5 out of 5 stars.

Thumbs up to this mister Cook and keep up the good work. If you fix the Mac train wreck, then I might start thinking you are the right guy for the job. :apple:
 
So Apple is going to end mining. Will their top product be the Abacus Pro ?

p.s Climate change has always occurred as a result of eccentricities in the earth's rotation and our orbit around the sun. Even Cooky and Ive combined can't change that.

p.p.s I wonder what bottom line waits for Apple's Tower of Babel.
 
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One more reason I prefer Apple if I'm paying premium prices.

And people seems to fail understanding this with user accessible parts. In reality, when users can access individual parts, it is less likely for those parts to be recycled properly, and many users and even shops don't even know any better how to dispose electronics parts. This is worse in emerging markets where regulations are less strict than Trump's mouth.
 
Bingo! You're catching on. iCloud locked devices are useless to everyone but Apple who can then unlock it as refurbs if in good condition or recycled.

Yeah right. Try to go to an Apple Store with an activation locked device: They're not even going to look at you, try to trade in your activation locked iPhone "please sir, can you please turn off find my phone?".
But now run or you are going to be late to your climate change denial summit
 
Cool story. Unfortunately Apple Retail is not factored into these numbers. There's some HUGE waste there. Not to mention they don't have access to renewable energy at the stores.

They do. They might not generate it themselves like for their datacenters, but you can just buy renewable energy on the market.
 
Meanwhile they even took away the possibility of just upgrading the ram of the Mac mini. So instead of putting more ram and an ssd into it and letting it run for a couple of years longer, you have to throw it away.

I think education would be a great step for Apple to take on these things.

No you should not "throw away" something that isn't powerful enough for your needs. Sell it, donate it - whatever you do don't throw it away.
 
Yeah right. Try to go to an Apple Store with an activation locked device: They're not even going to look at you, try to trade in your activation locked iPhone "please sir, can you please turn off find my phone?".

Which is what's brilliant about it because Apple will take it as a recycle without giving you any credit for it then turn around and unlock as refurb or recycle. Not the brightest of the bunch are you?
 
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It is my understanding Apple had denied the use of mining for raw materials in the BBC Panorama programme 'Apples Broken Promises' which makes for some unsettling viewing
Thanks for posting that. I'll watch it in full when I have more time. I saw the first few minutes and yeah, it was unsettling because I thought this footage was really old and then I found out it was from around iPhone 6, which wasn't that long ago and well past the time Apple supposedly had sorted out working conditions. We need to keep in mind though that Apple doesn't own those factories or suppliers, and it's way too easily for Apple's inspections and efforts to be stymied by outright deceit.

I'm out of time to comment more...other than to say to everyone else, we should probably just eliminate "climate change" from the discussion because people will be debating that one all day. Our climate is absolutely changing, but endless argument about how and why is just endless argument that solves nothing and gets in the way.

Instead, we should focus on the common ground we can all definitely agree on...we do not want more pollution. We don't want to be breathing in contaminated particulates blowing in from industrial pollution. I don't want our own government rolling back regulations so that our drinking water becomes even more risky to drink, our air quality once again returns to nasty levels I knew as a child, and our beautiful country or other beautiful countries scarred by mining and workers' lives shortened by mining. So we do need to cut back, cut down and eliminate practices that cause or exacerbate pollution when and where it's feasible.

We have other options at our disposal. As I said before, they each have their own price and entail their own sacrifices we need to evaluate carefully. I don't like the "green" label because it politicizes our options and makes certain options seem better in ALL circumstances and that is simply dishonest and taking the easy way out. Sometimes wind or water turbines in some locations would cause more harm to the local ecology than another more politically demonized option.

People are way too easily swayed by rhetoric or drawn into crusades that defy logic and reason...on either side of any issue. We need to cut back on the rhetoric and the politics and just do what makes the best sense in any given set of circumstances.
 
This is a very bold statement to make.

This is years away from even coming close to being a reality. If they do so, be prepared for prices to go through the roof.

Would be incredible if it was acheived though.
 
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