Nearly 100,000 iPhones that Apple paid a contractor to scrap were stolen and shipped to China, an in-depth report shows.
Apple sued the company involved, but now appears to have dropped the lawsuit, with the report suggesting it was to avoid publicly admitting that it orders the shredding of perfectly usable devices, in stark contrast to Apple’s environmental stance. the company…
Bloomberg The report is long, but the gist is this. Apple accepts older devices from customers for trade-in and recycling. Many of these devices remain in perfect working order and could easily be wiped and resold on the second-hand market. Instead, Apple paid an outside contractor known as GEEP to destroy more than a quarter of a million a year.
During the first two years of this contract, Apple sent GEEP more than 530,000 iPhones, 25,000 iPads and 19,000 Apple Watches.
However, an Apple audit found that at least 99,975 working iPhones that GEEP claimed to have discarded were siphoned off to China and sold on the second-hand market.
In 2020, Apple sued GEEP for breach of contract, but nothing has happened since. The case will automatically be dropped in January next year unless Apple moves forward. The same goes for the related lawsuit filed by GEEP against three of its former employees, accused of the thefts (this expires in August of this year).
The implication is that these cases would expose the fact that Apple is discarding hundreds of thousands of usable devices because fewer products on the used market means more demand for new devices.
When the lawsuits came to light, first reported in late 2020 by Logic, a Canadian media outlet, industry observers were stunned. It wasn’t just the shocking scale of the alleged heist; The incident involved Apple forcing a recycling partner to shred tens of thousands of iPhones that were apparently in perfect condition for refurbishment. The timing was bad: that same year, Apple publicly committed to achieving 100% carbon neutrality throughout the life cycle of its products by 2030 and specified in an environmental report that “reuse is our first choice “. Critics said shredding contradicted Apple’s green marketing and was likely a way to prevent cheaper used hardware from interfering with sales of new products.
Apple declined to comment on details, but said things have changed since then.
An Apple spokesperson says that recycling of electronics has now progressed “by leaps and bounds” since the GEEP lawsuit was filed, and that the company creates durable products that often serve multiple owners. “Apple’s industry-leading recycling program provides customers with easy ways to bring their devices back for analysis for refurbishment and reuse,” the spokesperson said.
One of these changes was the launch of an improved iPhone recycling robot, Daisy, which replaced the first version, Liam. But the article suggests it may be primarily a public relations move, with a very different story behind the scenes.
Back when Apple was putting Daisy online in the Netherlands, a person then employed at Re-Teck, another Apple recycling partner on the street, remembers witnessing tons of AirPods being crushed , Macs and watches, many of which appeared to be in good condition. shape. (Re-Teck declined to comment.) In some cases, the employee said, workers smashed the devices with hammers.
iFixit co-founder Kyle Wiens believes that shredding functional devices that could be repaired or used as replacement parts should be illegal.
Photo: Apple
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