Apple increased the use of recycled metals in its devices during its fiscal 2021, the iPhone maker highlighted, as it unveiled a new machine designed to further up materials recovered from shredded devices.

In its 2022 Environmental Progress Report the smartphone maker revealed in fiscal 2021 (the year to 25 September 2021), 18 per cent of all material used in its products were recycled. This covered a host of elements including gold, tungsten, rare Earth metals and cobalt.

Apple hailed this as a record figure, though did not provide a comparative one in its previous report.

The manufacturer added 59 per cent of aluminium in Apple products came from recycled sources, while it had also pressed-on with the drastic cut-back of plastics used in its packaging as it aims to eliminate its use by 2025.

Alongside increasing use of recycled materials in new devices, Apple also noted the benefit of using cutting-edge machinery able to derive materials from old ones.

Apple noted one metric tonne of components from disassembled iPhones was able to yield the same amount of copper and gold which miners would typically extract from 2,000 metric tonnes of rock.

As part of its drive to recycle metals from its own products, Apple revealed its latest recovery machine named Taz.

The latest addition to its recycling arsenal uses “shredder-like technology” to separate magnets from audio modules and recover associated elements, it added. Apple has also extended the scope of iPhone disassembly robot Daisy to be able to strip 23 models.