Apple is actually suing its former recycling partner in GEEP Canada for allegedly stealing as well as reselling at least 103,845 iPhones, iPads and watches that the company was actually hired to disassemble. “At least 11,766 pounds of Apple devices left GEEP’s premises without being destroyed – a fact that GEEP itself confirmed,” reads a portion of Apple’s complaint.
Indeed Apple has sent the recycling firm more than 500,000 phone iPhones, iPads and Apples watches in between that of January 2015 and December 2017. When Apple then proceeded on to carry out an audit, it was discovered that 18 percent of such devices were still accessing the internet through cellular networks. That 18 percent doesn’t count Apple devices without a cellular radio – hence it is possible that an even higher percentage of the gadgets were actually resold.
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It is said that Apple actually seeks to obtain at least $22.7 million from its former partner. While the recycling firm does deny all wrongdoing, it doesn’t in fact dent that there was in fact theft – and it has so since filed a third-party suit going on to claim that three employees actually stole the devices in their own account. However, Apple disagrees with such statements claiming that such employees were in fact senior management at the recycling firm.
Last year, it was claimed that humans left behind a record amount of e-waste adding up to 53.6 million metric tons of discarded phones, computers, appliances and also other gadgets. Much like other tech companies, Apple’s too has been in the process of trying to improve its environmental practices – which includes an effort to move recycling in-house with its very own disassembly robots which are in fact designed in such a manner so as to recover iPhone components that traditional recyclers can’t.
