Meet Liam: Apple’s recycling robot
Apple gets serious about recovering parts from old iPhones
During the event at which it unveiled the iPhone SE, Apple had another new creation to reveal: an elaborate robotic disassembly line, named Liam. The first of its kind in the world, Liam is devoted entirely to taking apart iPhone 6s handsets that are no longer wanted, and separating them into different parts and materials in a more precise way than any other sytem, ensuring that everything can be recycled as efficiently as possible.
Liam was reportedly kept under wraps from almost everyone at Apple, save for the engineers involved in its creation. It’s a 29-armed hydra, capable of totally disassembling an iPhone 6s in just 11 seconds, and handling many iPhones at once as it transports them between stations on its conveyer belt. It takes up almost the whole width of a warehouselike facility, according to a report by Samantha Kelly Murphy of
Mashable, who was given a tour of the secret facility. Running 9-5 from Monday to Friday, Liam can dismantle 1.2 million iPhones per year. It’s overseen by humans; if one arm breaks, it can keep running for a while without the load backing up, but people can step in to take over some tasks while an arm is repaired by an engineer.
This 1.2 million figure is great, though it’s only a tiny fraction of the hundreds of millions of iPhones Apple sells every year – and it only works for one single model. So, although Liam is a big step forward for recycling electronics both in terms of efficiency and safety for workers, its impact will be small for now – especially since not all disused phones make their way back to Apple anyway. There are plans for more Liam units, with a second nearly ready for construction in Europe, and Apple will no doubt look at creating new models for its other devices.
Even if Liam can’t single-handedly (or 29-armedly) save the world, it’s good to know that years from now, when you are eventually ready to recycle your old iPhone 6s (or if you have one that breaks in the meantime, and you return it to Apple), every part of it will be reused as best it can be.