Almost 100,000 iPhones which Apple paid a contractor to scrap were instead stolen and shipped off to China, according to an in-depth report.
Apple accepts older devices from customers for trade-in and recycling.
Many of these devices remain in full working order, and could easily be wiped and resold on the used market.
Instead, Apple paid an outside contractor known as GEEP to shred more than a quarter of a million of them per year.
In 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 GEEP claimed to have scrapped were instead siphoned off to China and sold on the used market there.
The same is true of a related lawsuit GEEP brought against three of its former employees, who were blamed for the thefts (that one expires in August of this year).
iFixit co-founder Kyle Wiens believes that shredding working devices which could be repaired or used for spares should be illegal.
An extensive report claims that nearly 100,000 iPhones that Apple had paid a contractor to scrap were actually taken and sent to China.
Apple sued the company concerned, but now appears to have abandoned the lawsuit, with the report suggesting this is to avoid publicly admitting that it orders the shredding of perfectly usable devices, in stark contrast to the company’s environmental stance ….
Although Bloomberg’s report is long, this is its main point. Apple allows users to trade in and recycle their older devices. Numerous of these devices are still fully functional and could be easily wiped and resold on the secondary market. Rather, Apple paid GEEP, an outside contractor, to shred over a quarter of a million of them annually.
GEEP received over 530,000 iPhones, 25,000 iPads, and 19,000 Apple Watches from Apple during the first two years of this agreement.
At least 99,975 functional iPhones that GEEP claimed to have scrapped were, according to an Apple audit, actually shipped to China and sold there on the used market.
Apple filed a breach of contract lawsuit against GEEP in 2020, but nothing has come of it since. If Apple doesn’t pursue the case, it will be automatically dismissed in January of the following year. In a related lawsuit that expires in August of this year, GEEP blamed three of its former employees for the thefts. This is also true.
The cases could potentially reveal that Apple discards hundreds of thousands of functional devices because a smaller used product market would increase demand for new ones.
Industry watchers were taken aback when the lawsuits were revealed, as originally reported by the Canadian news source Logic in late 2020. Beyond the startling scope of the alleged theft, there were hints in the incident that Apple was pressuring a recycling partner to destroy tens of thousands of iPhones that were ostensibly in excellent enough condition for repair. The timing was peculiar since, in an environmental report that same year, Apple stated that “reuse is our first choice” and made a public commitment to becoming completely carbon neutral over the course of its product life cycle by 2030. Critics claimed that Apple’s green marketing was in conflict with the shredding, which was probably done to prevent sales of new products from being impacted by less expensive secondhand hardware.
While acknowledging that circumstances have since changed, Apple declined to comment on the specifics.
As per an Apple representative, since the GEEP lawsuit was filed, electronics recycling has made significant progress and the company is producing durable products that are frequently used by multiple owners. “The representative states that customers can easily return their devices for refurbishment and reuse through Apple’s industry-leading recycling program.”.
One of those modifications was the introduction of Daisy, an enhanced iPhone recycling robot that took Liam’s place. Still, the article raises the possibility that this is largely a public relations stunt with a completely different backstory.
A former employee of Re-Teck, another Apple recycling partner nearby, remembers seeing tons of AirPods, Macs, and Watches crushed around the time Apple was launching Daisy in the Netherlands. Many of the devices looked to be in good condition. Re-Teck declined to provide a statement. The employee claims that in certain instances, workers would use hammers to smash the devices.
Kyle Wiens, a co-founder of iFixit, thinks it ought to be against the law to destroy functional gadgets that can be fixed or kept as spares.
