Cupertino tech giant Apple introduced a new robot Liam sometime last year. The company said the robot’s sole job was to destroy iPhone devices in a way that valuable materials inside would be easily recovered and reused and the rest of the hardware could be disposed. These set of Liam robots are currently operating in California and Netherlands.
According to Apple, one Liam system can disassemble 1.2 million iPhone 6 units in a year. Moreover, according to a new report, the maximum 2.4 million phones the two systems can take apart per year are a fraction of the 211 million iPhones Apple sold in 2016.
"For every 10,000 phones that Liam disassembles, we have the potential to recover 190 kg of aluminum, 80 kg of copper, 0.13 kg of gold, 0.04 kg of platinum group metals, 0.70 kg of silver, 5.5 kg of tin, and 2.4 kg of rare earth elements," Apple reportedly wrote.
