Apple ordered Ontario company to destroy hundreds of thousands of old iPhones: report

[PastaPain]

 

Remove all of the italicised text before posting.

 

Summary

 tdlr: apple made headlines in Canada for using ontario based company GEEP for shredding old devices

 

Quotes

Quote

 

According to Bloomberg, the tech giant has regularly sent “tens of thousands” of old iPhones to Barrie, Ontario-based shredding company GEEP Inc. for destruction. Altogether, Apple has shipped GEEP more than 530,000 iPhones, 25,000 iPads, and 19,000 Watches for shredding over the past few years. Per the publication, Apple’s contract with GEEP explicitly required that every product it sent was to be destroyed, as they were “better off scrapped for their precious metals than refurbished.”

 

Another reason Apple does this is because there are limitations with its existing recycling robot, Daisy. As Bloomberg explains, Daisy can only dismantle around 200 units per hour, which works out to nearly 1.2 million recycled iPhones per year. While that might sound like a lot, Apple sells that many iPhones in just 48 hours. Therefore, automation isn’t enough for Apple’s recycling needs, including companies like GEEP.

 

My thoughts

 Apple should have still sold them, its a waste of good hardware

 

Sources

 https://mobilesyrup.com/2024/04/19/apple-ontario-geep-destory-old-iphones-report/

 

 

[Sauron]

Apple is far from being alone in doing this. To some extent, demanding all iphones turned in to Apple be refurbished and resold no matter how outdated they are is probably unreasonable - however proper and environmentally friendly (when possible) disposal should be legally mandated.

 

There's also the fact that these devices (not just from Apple) are designed to be hard to repair and to be obsolete within a few years, which worsens the ewaste problem at the root. A lot of people should probably be more mindful of their devices and try to make them last, but there's only so much you can do when, by design, they aren't built to last.

[PastaPain]

4 minutes ago, Sauron said:

Apple is far from being alone in doing this. To some extent, demanding all iphones turned in to Apple be refurbished and resold no matter how outdated they are is probably unreasonable - however proper and environmentally friendly (when possible) disposal should be legally mandated.

 

There's also the fact that these devices (not just from Apple) are designed to be hard to repair and to be obsolete within a few years, which worsens the ewaste problem at the root. A lot of people should probably be more mindful of their devices and try to make them last, but there's only so much you can do when, by design, they aren't built to last.

you make a good point, apple making them hard to repair it makes it seem like they would be meant to be obsolete

[podkall]

Such a waste to shred iphones, some of the components could have been reused, for example the camera lenses could be thrown into a midrange phone or something.

[Sauron]

34 minutes ago, podkall said:

Such a waste to shred iphones, some of the components could have been reused, for example the camera lenses could be thrown into a midrange phone or something.

I don't think it's that easy, you'd have to design said phone (and its camera sensor) with those lenses in mind. Almost every iphone generation uses a different lens, too, which makes this even harder. And I doubt Apple is eager to share their designs and specs with a third party.

 

Again, you'd have to rethink the whole production process with a greater focus on durability, repairability and reusability for these changes to work.

[podkall]

28 minutes ago, Sauron said:

I don't think it's that easy, you'd have to design said phone (and its camera sensor) with those lenses in mind. Almost every iphone generation uses a different lens, too, which makes this even harder. And I doubt Apple is eager to share their designs and specs with a third party.

 

Again, you'd have to rethink the whole production process with a greater focus on durability, repairability and reusability for these changes to work.

What's wrong with lens? Isn't it just a sensor that sends signals more or less?

[wanderingfool2]

An additional thing to note, there is a security aspect to this as well.  There have been a lot of phones that were "recycled" only to have the data recovered off the phone.  A simple factory reset doesn't do the trick either

[JakobRush]

We actually reported on this on Friday.  It was our title story.

[Salted Spinach]

1 hour ago, wanderingfool2 said:

An additional thing to note, there is a security aspect to this as well.  There have been a lot of phones that were "recycled" only to have the data recovered off the phone.  A simple factory reset doesn't do the trick either

Yup Apple devices do not encrypt your data. For your security, we need to destroy all your working Apple devices so that your data will be safe in case they are misplaced or stolen.

 

Yes including the iPhone you bought 5 minutes ago. Hand it over now

[Sauron]

2 hours ago, podkall said:

What's wrong with lens? Isn't it just a sensor that sends signals more or less?

The lens is "just" the glass part that focuses light onto the sensor. The sensor is what actually captures the image. Not all sensors are the same, especially between phones, and therefore they can't just be swapped around like lego bricks. Now, if the industry were more standardized and phones were designed to be more repairable, this may not be the case... but that's not the world we live in right now.

 

@wanderingfool2 data scrapes from refurbs can be solved by 1) having the drive be encrypted, which I think is already the case on iphones, and 2) diligently writing it over with random data. The latter isn't something you can easily do if you're a third party, but it could be done by Apple if they really wanted to. Though as I mentioned, with the way iphones are made there are many reasons why trying to resell them all would probably be a fruitless endeavor.

[LogicalDrm]

@PastaPain, this thread has been moved to General Discussion. Please add more content to your summary and personal thoughts to comply with Tech News guidelines. Also, note that there's still some parts of the Tech News template left in your post.

[LAwLz]

I am not really sure why people are surprised by this or what people are reading into this story.

What did people think happened with old phones? That they magically became new phones? It's not like the phones being sent there for destruction are the latest model with zero issues. The phones that are in good shape and a somewhat new model gets sold as refurbished by Apple.

 

Taking the phones and recycling the materials is very common in IT.

When the article says "destroyed", it means recycled.

 

 

I think the biggest story here is that an employee at GEEP apparently stole a bunch of phones and sold them.

And before someone asks, a private person selling old iPhones on for example eBay or Craigslist can get away with selling partially broken or very roughed-up phones. 

[Needfuldoer]

On 4/23/2024 at 5:46 AM, LAwLz said:

I think the biggest story here is that an employee at GEEP apparently stole a bunch of phones and sold them.

Exactly. 

 

Even if we ignore the "stealing company property" issue, there's a good chance those devices were supposed to go through a secure data destruction process. GEEP could be liable if anything leaks from these stolen phones.

 

Yes, they could secure erase every device, but that can cost more than the device is worth. Manually secure erasing drives out of laptops and desktop computers is dubiously economical; nobody's going to bother secure erasing and certifying a 1 TB hard drive when a brand new one costs $40. It doesn't make sense to invest any amount of manual labor into a 4 year old phone that also needs a new battery before it's good enough to resell to your average Joe or Jane Consumer.

 

More often than not, it makes more economic sense to throw the whole thing into a shredder and sift the debris that comes out the other end. 
 

Nobody’s going to painstakingly disassemble an old phone just to reuse a camera lens when a new one costs a fraction of a fraction of a penny to produce. 

[Rocketdog2112]

On 4/22/2024 at 9:11 AM, podkall said:

Such a waste to shred iphones, some of the components could have been reused, for example the camera lenses could be thrown into a midrange phone or something.

A door stop perhaps?