Apple have led the industry when it comes to thought about how things are put together, they continue to innovate in the fields of process design, materials development and manufacturing. Their continued mission of sustainability from packaging to shipping has been in place for quite a while, and Apple has now underlined the importance of corporate responsibility with (what is frankly a win-win) by their practice of harvesting various metals and materials from your old devise when it has reached the end of it's life. Reports have estimated that the tech giant have collected nearly $40M in gold (a little over 1 ton by current market values) from all the various cameras, chips, circuit boards and sensors found in every iPhone.
Cult of Mac ran the figures quoted by Apple through last Friday's metal prices, and came up with individual figures for copper ($6.4 million), aluminum ($3.2 million), silver ($1.6 million), nickel ($160,426), zinc ($109,503), and lead ($33,999).
http://www.apple.com/environment/
