Apple has filed a complaint against one of its business partners, a recycling company that is said to have resold more than 100,000 iPhones, tablets and watches.
The company, GEEP Canada, was hired to dismantle and recycle the aircraft. According to the indictment, it instead stole 103,845 iPhones, iPads and Watches for resale.
Apple sent the recycling company about half a million devices between 2015 and 2017. An audit must show that 18 percent of those devices still have access to the mobile phone network. The tech giant is now seeking $ 31 million in damages.
While many tech companies are attempting to reduce their environmental footprint by recycling devices, they still often clash with the market on reuse. We saw this preceding year, for example, when the ‘recycling mode’ of old Sonos speakers disabled the devices so that they could no longer be sold.
Reselling older devices is, in principle, better for the environment than dismantling them and recycling the individual pieces. But most manufacturers prefer not to see this recycling market.
Products sent to recycling centres are no longer good enough to sell to consumers, and if repaired with unofficial pieces, they can cause errors, including battery problems.
