Apple works to build better recycling robots

Apple’s Daisy robot can disassemble up to 1.2 million phones each year, helping Apple recover more valuable materials for recycling. The company has offered to license the patents related to Daisy for researchers and other electronics manufacturers developing their own disassembly processes.
Apple is working to transform how electronics are recycled with a robot named “Daisy” that disassembles iPhone so that rare earth and other metals can be reused, yet rising global demand for electronics means new mines will still be necessary.

Brian Heater for TechCrunch:
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Last week, TechCrunch paid a visit to Apple’s Austin, Texas manufacturing facilities. Since 2013, the company has built its Mac Pro desktop about 20 minutes north of downtown… A small recycling facility lies just beyond that. The spot is home to a moderate-sized industrial e-waste sortation system. The maze of metal chutes utilize high-powered magnets to extract metals and rare earth materials from Apple devices that have reached end of life. Most of the actual e-waste sortation occurs off-site in other third-party e-waste management facilities. This specific system is instead utilized for the company’s on-going push to improve the process.
Tim Cook kicked off a March 2016 iPad Pro keynote by breaking down the latest in the company’s sustainability efforts. In amongst the news was Liam, Apple’s latest attempt to leverage state of the art robotics in its sortation efforts. The robot that debuted at that event was actually Liam 2.0, an update to robot the company began piloting behind the scenes in 2013.
Daisy significantly reduces Liam’s overall footprint from 29 robots across 100 feet to four primary modules, while increasing the number of material output streams from 8 to 15. The biggest improvement, however, is the increase in compatibility from a single iPhone model (the 6 in the case of Liam 2.0) to several. Apple has continually updates that figure in the 7.5 years since Daisy arrived. The robot now handles 29 different models, up from 18 a year and a half ago.

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