Apple unveiled one of their biggest launches last year in the form of "Liam". This eco-friendly recycling robot takes apart iPhones so their components can be used to make new Apple products. The tech giant revealed on Wednesday more new details about its iPhone-destroying robot as part the company's annual environment report.
The recycling robot is actually made up of 29 different machines organized in a conveyor line with 21 stations. It takes around 11 seconds for the machine to take apart an iPhone into eight different pieces. It is estimated that each robot can disassemble 1.2 million iPhone 6 units in a year, and currently, there are two of them fully operational in California and in the Netherlands.
According to the Business Insider, the highly-efficient "Liam" robot leaves Apple with boxes comprised of only a single component that used to be on an iPhone, like a screw, or a battery. Check out the video below for a full demonstration on how this one of a kind recycling robot works.
Per Digital Trends, the initiative is one of the company approaches to render positive actions that are reflected on their annual Environmental Responsibility Report. The published report also details the firm’s ongoing and future initiatives in promoting a greener and cleaner environment. The Apple report stated its goal of developing a supply chain where it does not need to tap into other resources, where products are built using only renewable resources or recycled material.
With the help of "Liam", Apple has already taken steps to achieve that goal by melting down some of the iPhone 6’s aluminum to make Mac mini computers. It has also tweaked the iPhone 7’s chemical formula to render a reduction in the number of non recyclable components, which has gone down to 27 percent. The company has shared their vision of totally cutting their dependence on mining altogether.
