All products featured on WIRED are independently selected by our editors. However, we may receive compensation from retailers and/or from purchases of products through these links.
When Apple’s chief marketing maven, Phil Schiller, said the new line of iPhones were designed to be “environmentally friendly,” my interest was piqued (I’m the guy behind the iFixit teardowns). Because there is no such thing as an environmentally friendly phone -- especially one without an easily replaceable battery. It’s irresponsible to suggest otherwise.
Last night, we pulled apart both the iPhone 5s and 5c to see just how truthful Apple is being. How green are Apple’s new iPhones, really?
They’re not the least repairable phones Apple has put out … but they’re not really environmentally friendly, either. And the iPhone 5c is not as recyclable. When it comes to being green, both of these qualities really matter.
Repairable Displays on the Outside, Glued-Down Death Clocks on the Inside
It’s simple: the easier phones are to repair, the longer they last, and the more people will be able to use it before it meets its final end. Lengthening product lifetime is the most tangible, direct way to combat the environmental impact of both raw materials mining and e-waste.
The two components most likely to break are the battery and the display assembly. So it was good news when the iPhone 5 hit a high note in terms of repairability last year: For the first time ever, a user could swap out components as long as they had a pentalobe driver for Apple’s proprietary screw (a big ‘if’ there, by the way).
The new iPhones aren’t the least repairable phones we’ve ever seen (that dubious designation goes to the HTC One). Both boast easy-to-replace display assemblies: If you shatter your screen, and the parts are available, it will be reasonably inexpensive to have repaired (and is even pretty straightforward to DIY). That’s important.
But that’s not the whole story. How long your phone lasts depends on how much you use it.
Apple’s estimates of its environmental impact (that their products generate 9.3 million metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions or 30% of Apple’s total emissions) are based on assuming four years of use for a Mac and three years of use for an iDevice.
Without a battery replacement, iPhones usually don’t make it that long (Apple rates the lifespan of the iPhone’s battery at around 400 cycles or complete charges).
That's why we were bummed when we took apart the latest iPhones and found the batteries slathered in glue. (The 5c's 1510 mAh battery is just a hair slimmer than the 1560 mAh battery of the 5s.) It took heat and prying to get the batteries up in both phones -- not the most desirable operations to perform on something that expels noxious fumes if punctured.
Which means these devices are designed with glued-down death clocks. A company that overtly claims its latest products are environmentally friendly shouldn’t stymie such routine maintenance.
One Word: Plastics -- When It Comes to Recyclability
Apple prides itself on its recycling program, estimating a worldwide recycling rate of 70 percent. But that percentage assumes a seven-year-product lifetime. To understand how disingenuous that is (it may be technically but not practically true), just think about this: How many people do you know who still use the original iPhone? And that was released just over six years ago; it hasn’t even been seven years yet.
Still, Apple’s iPhones have at least always been manufactured out of recyclable materials, given its now-iconic glass and aluminum design. Yet the latest iPhone 5c -- with its playdough-inspired palette -- could make recycling more difficult.
Why? Because it introduces 14 grams of hard-to-recycle polycarbonate to the mix, where the iPhone 5 had none. Every port, button, and slider has had its metal swapped out for plastic.
[#contributor: /contributors/592667d4f3e2356fd8009245]|||Kyle Wiens is the co-founder and CEO of iFixit, an online repair community and parts retailer internationally renowned for their open source repair manuals and product teardowns. Launched out of his Cal Poly college dorm room in 2003, iFixit has now empowered upwards of 15 million people to repair their broken stuff.|||
Polycarbonate material requires chemical recycling to decompose the plastic for reuse. The iPhone’s polycarbonate case is strengthened with a lacquer coating, which increases the case's longevity. But this also complicates an already-complex recycling process: In order to make new phones from this plastic, the coating would have to be ground off, burned off, or otherwise removed. This is a far cry from the high-yield process of simply melting waste aluminum.
If you think that this plastic will end up in another phone, think again. If we're lucky, it will end up in a park bench.
And while the iPhone 5s is still manufactured from Apple’s normal line-up of aluminum, it’s important to remember that recycling isn’t the panacea the company wants it to be. It doesn’t undo the destruction-manufacturing of 700 million iOS devices.
Apple -- and other companies -- can’t recycle an old phone into a new phone, let alone reclaim the critical, and arguably most damaging, rare earth element materials lost during recycling. Processing one ton of rare earth metals creates an astounding 75 cubic meters of acidic waste and one ton of radioactive residue.
***
At the end of the day, all of these activities -- whether it’s a user buying a phone or a company marketing its environmental friendliness -- occur in a broader cultural than purely technical context. I may love the technical act of tearing down devices but I never forget the social reality that every single iPhone 5s or iPhone 5c comes with baggage consumers never see: mining, materials extraction, resource-intensive manufacturing. Processes that leave a mark on nearly every continent across the globe -- not just a Foxconn assembly factory in China.
As we learned with diamonds, materials can be ethically dubious. But it’s not just the rare earth elements. Just last month, a Bloomberg report speculated that the some of the tungsten used in Apple products could be funding FARC rebels in Colombia. And Apple recently launched an investigation into whether tin from dangerous mines in Bangka is being used in its new iPhones.
Editor: Sonal Chokshi @smc90
