The Recycling Project That Lead to a Gold Mine

Apple's recycling program has resulted in an astounding collection of gold from their product. How much did they collect? Read about it here.

Aside from helping the environment, Apple's recycling projects are also making good money for the company: Digital Trends' Lulu Chang reports that Apple recovered a total of 2,204 pounds of gold through its recycling efforts in 2015, amounting to over a ton of the precious metal.

Based on current market prices, the recycled gold is worth around $40 million which is a major yearly profit even for a tech giant like Apple.

While many are familiar with numerous gold-plated Apple products, the bulk of the recovered gold comes from electronic components found in regular products: gold's properties often make it a better choice for consumer electronics than silver (conductive, but corrosive) and copper (inexpensive, but offering poor conductivity). Therefore, bits of gold can be found in most higher-end electronic devices such as iPhones, iPads and Macs.

Over the course of 2015, Apple managed to recover around 90 millions of pounds of e-waste, with two-thirds of it being reusable. Besides gold, Apple also collected 6,600 pounds of silver and millions of pounds of other useful materials.

Apple mentioned the financial and environmental benefits of recycling in a recent official statement: "We work hard to keep electronic devices out of landfills so that the precious resources they contain can be reused. And we want to ensure that these devices are recycled properly so they don’t pose a threat to human health or the environment," said the company.

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Is gold the tangible asset you can't erase, hack or delete? Read more here.