Earth Day Celebration: Apple Announces Free Recycling Of All Its Products

By Vivek

| Updated: Tuesday, April 22, 2014, 13:15 [IST]

The way Apple started celebrating the Earth Day today is not really a novel one but still what almost every big industrial firms tend to do. However, greener is always better, thus the Cupertino-based world's largest technology firm has initiated a process which will allow the Apple fans to recycle their devices. At the same time, this will also help the company to diminish the pollution caused by its devices and online services.

Earth Day Celebration: Apple Announces Free Recycling Of Its Products

Apple, popular for its handheld devices based on the iOS platform, is offering free recycling of all its used products via all of its stores. All of the company's stores will recycle any Apple product at no charge at all. Moreover, Apple had already started disseminating gift cards at some of its 420 worldwide stores in exchange for iPhones and iPods, which are in a marketable condition. Gift cards won't be handed out for recycled products, however, with little or no resale value.

It is also reportedly said that Apple is also finding solution for diminishing the pollution and saving the resources by increasing its reliance on alternative power resources.

If you are wondering how recycling the products will help reduce the pollution, it is very simple. There is a wide range of Apple products including the batteries, which aren't very suitable to be dumped in landfills because of the toxins in them. Thus re-cycling them would definitely be a better choice.

In an interview, Lisa Jackson, Apple's vice president of environmental initiatives reportedly said, "What the company wants to do is use all our innovation and all of our expertise to make the planet more secure and make the environment better."

According to Greenpeace, an NGO that looks and works to protect the environmental condition, technology products and services accounted for about 2 per cent of worldwide emissions in 2012, which is close to the percentage of emission caused by airline industry.

Reportedly, the environmental organization further said, "Apple was the most innovative and most aggressive [company] in pursuing its commitment to be 100 percent renewably powered".

And despite selling 1 billion iPhones, iPods, iPads and Mac computers in the past 7 years, Apple says since 2008 it has reduced its devices' average power consumption by 57%, and its most recent iMac range uses 97% less electricity when in sleep mode than the first, which came out in 1998.