Re:That awkward moment when Apple mocked good hardware and p...
by jonknee on Wednesday March 23, 2016 @10:55AM
(#11345012)
They talk about harvesting the raw metals and elements in the video... The hard part in ewaste recycling isn't collecting the devices, it's breaking them down into their isolated components. The robot's aim is to do that instead of a shredder so that they can have a much higher re-use rate.
http://mashable.com/2016/03/21/apple-liam-recycling-robot/
And of course this is also a project to have a robot do the reverse--assemble iPhones.
What will happen in reality is the phone will go into a industrial shredder and then the process of separating/recycling will begin. The robot seems like a marketing gimmick (they even have it a name), and will not be involved in 99% of the recycling process.
I really want to be proven wrong.