INTRO

Using the 10Rs as a baseline, numerous perspectives will be shared on the improved recycling of the iPhone XR and its
battery

It is obvious that certain steps are more relevant than others in the scope of reaching circular economy of the phone industry.
In particular, we will explore in detail the Recycle step of the framework.

REFUSE -> prevent raw material use

-(phones used to serve a few functions. Now they are multifunctional to a ridiculous extent. It replaced a lot of objects that
accomplished their role without requiring a whole li-ion battery)

RETHINK -> include environmental impact in process

REDUCE -> doing more with less : Esperance de vie du produit, efficacité de la chaine de
production,
-aggressive marketing, with new models every year which is unneeded and leads to a lot of waste (reducing life expectancy)

-using batteries that deteriorate quickly.

REUSE -> resell, second hand

-second-hand system to be improved  reselling unwanted iphones

REPAIR -> repair centres, throwaway culture, planned obsolescence.

-all unused phones to be sent in repair centres

Batteries  27% des pannes Le guide du smartphone écologique en 2021 (e-recycle.com)

REFURBISH -> reconditionnement
-favor refurbishing over recycling the whole phone

Recyclage des smartphones : en progrès mais peut mieux faire - Geo.fr chiffre sur reconditionnement

REMANUFACTURE -> use undamaged pieces in damaged items in new items

REPURPOSE -> repurposing a discarded product into a new one with a different function
-lithium-ion batteries repurposed for grid storage
RECYCLE -> rendre le téléphone plus facile à recycler, améliorer les chaînes de recyclage
apple, extraire un maximum de composants à un état le plus pur possible
-hydrometallurgical route for the sequential recovery of copper, nickel, gold, silver and zinc from WPCBs through
leaching, solvent extraction and cementation processes  Sequential recovery of copper, nickel, gold, silver and zinc
from WPCBs of obsolete mobile phones through hydrometallurgical recycling - ScienceDirect

RECOVER -> utiliser les pièces restantes qui ne peuvent être recyclées afin de récupérer de
l’énergie

+ new assessments for product recyclability needed Product design and recyclability: How
statistical entropy can form a bridge between these concepts - A case study of a smartphone - ScienceDirect

INTRO:
In the scope of improving recyclability for the iPhone XR, the 10R concept described
by Potting et al [https://dspace.library.uu.nl/handle/1874/358310] + lecture + image is used as an all-
encompassing framework. However, the Recycling step will be thoroughly studied whereas
the other steps will be more concise.

REFUSE:
As phones become more and more omnipresent in our lives, and are used to achieve
more and more functions (apple pay, scanner…), it does not seem realistic to seek for
improvements in this area. However, phones are replacing objects that were far less complex
to manufacture and recycle, and that didn’t require as much electricity to function.
Furthermore, the average user takes advantage of a small portion of the offered functions,
making their design unnecessarily complex. Stat? Adapting the offer to different demands
would help reduce the manufacturing complexity of phones.

RETHINK:
Aiming at reducing the environmental impact when designing or recycling a product
is fundamental. Today, only profit is taken in account, as we have seen that only the
economically profitable parts of the iPhone are thoroughly recycled (rare metals, gold,
palladium…).
There is only little consideration to the overall recyclability, because the phone cannot be
disassembled into its pure materials. When the iPhone was disassembled, we have quickly
realized that the design did not focus on this aspect. The very high product complexity
combined to the lack of focus leads to a weak disassembling capability of the iPhone.
Nevertheless, a direct correlation between the recyclability and the disassembling capability
proves that iPhones should be designed in a way that allows easy disassembly
[https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959652621041408].

REDUCE:
 Reducing, or the art of doing more with less. With the very fast advancement in
technology and the very fierce competition between phone brands, very aggressive marketing
strategies are privileged, convincing customers to regularly change their phone.
Consequently, although the life expectancy of iPhones ranges from 4 to 8 years, [What is the
average smartphone lifespan? | Everphone], the actual use span is of only 2 years in developed
countries. Source pic: CIRP. [Here's how long Apple users are holding on to their iPhones - 9to5Mac]

This leads to a futile growth of the e-waste stream. Social awareness on this matter is the
solution to a decrease of generated e-waste.

REUSE:
When the customers upgrade their phone, they have a very low consideration for their
old device. Indeed, it is reported that there are 85 million unused phones solely in the U.K.,
and that 11% of the households hold at least 5 of them. [Mobile phone recycling facts and figures |
Mazuma Mobile]. This lack of consideration leads to considerable waste, although selling it on a
second-hand website would reduce the overall demand for new phones.

REPAIR:
Only 36% of the customers in France repair their phone when it stops functioning.
[Français et la réparation - Infographies - La librairie ADEME]. The complexity encountered to
disassemble the phone, as well as the weak modularity of its different parts are important
causes of the lack of reparability of the iPhones.
The major issue when a phone stops working is the battery. It accounts for 27% of the
breakdowns. [https://fr.e-recycle.com/fr/blog/developpement-durable/guide-du-smartphone-ecologique-en-
2021/]. It is also supposed to be the easiest to fix. However, it is nearly impossible to replace
the battery without going to a dedicated shop that will charge discouraging prices. On the
official website of Apple, a battery replacement is estimated to cost you 100 euros. For
numerous customers, it is the sign to buy a new, more recent model and throw away the old
device.

REFURBISH/REMANUFACTURE:
Refurbishing is a growing trend in the phone market. In the latest years, several
brands, including Apple, have promised to increase the number of refurbished devices sold.
Very often, old malfunctioning devices solely need a new battery to be refurbished back to an
original state. On the other hand, undamaged batteries can be extracted from broken devices
and put in remanufactured phones. These processes are only possible if old devices are
properly disposed by the customers, in dedicated places.

REPURPOSE:
Repurposing of certain parts of the phone, especially the lithium-ion polymer battery
in the iPhone XR, is an essential step to minimize the waste. While their capacity is over 70%
of its maximal capacity, EoL batteries can be repurposed in less demanding applications such
as energy-storage systems or uninterrupted power supply.
[https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/B9780323911344000200] Mobile phone batteries
associated with a solar panel and a LED can be a good replacement for kerosene lamps.
[https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S096014811500052X]

RECOVER:
Recovering waste mobile phones is very inefficient and represents a rather high loss
of value. Because of the high toxicity of most of the parts, non-recyclable parts are stored
rather than incinerated.

RECYCLE:
 Battery: Lithium-ion battery is mostly recycled through pyrometallurgy and
hydrometallurgy, undergoing high temperatures and therefore requiring a lot of energy and
operational costs. In recent years, bioleaching (or biohydrometallurgy) has gained popularity
to extract Lithium, Nickel, Cobalt and/or Manganese from Lithium-ion batteries. Source pic :
[https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0045653521014168]. Using microorganisms to
recover the metals by bio-oxidation, the process does not produce hazardous gases emissions
and acid waste that are inevitable in classic hydrometallurgy.

Concerning the pretreatment of the battery that consists of removing the casing, foils, and
plastics to extract the metals to be recycled, there is no straightforward improvement. The
pre-treatment can be separated in seven steps; discharge, dismantling, comminution,
classification, separation, dissolution, and thermal treatment
[https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959652621005497]. All of the steps have their own
challenges and future outlooks, in particular the energy and cost demanding separation and
dissolution. Specific favourable techniques will depend on the desired purity and future
application of the recycled metals. However, improving the pretreatment of the Lithium-ion
battery will enhance the efficiency of the biohydrometallurgy, and is therefore of great
interest to scientists seeking to make this process feasible on a larger, industrial scale.

Printed circuit board: Once again, bioleaching has been proven to efficiently
recover the copper (99%) from the wasted PCB. This process presents numerous advantages;
it does not require the crushing of the PCB, and the plate after the leaching of copper is left
intact and can be reused, in addition to being very eco-friendly. However, biohydrometallurgy
suffers long extraction time, making it not suitable to industry scale use yet.
[https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304386X19301343]

A similar two-step process leads to a recovery of 44% of the Gold contained in phone PCBs
in 48 hours. The low efficiency is caused by interferences with other metals in the PCB
during the reaction between gold and the microorganisms used.
[https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0956053X15302178]

Liquid Crystal Display: For the iPhone XR, Apple used its TFT LCD
technology. The main issue is that for several years, the Indium oxide used as a transparent
conductive coating was not recovered but stored after the display reached its end of life.
[https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921344914001955] However, at this time, 80% of
the Indium extracted was used as indium tin oxide for LCD coatings. As the demand for LCD
technology rose exponentially, and the scarcity of Indium worsened, it became clear that
appropriate processes to recover Indium had to be studied. In recent years, methods involving
numerous pretreatments steps succeeded to extract efficiently Indium from LCD, as well as
sulfuric acid leaching to refine the Indium to a purity of 97% [https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-019-
0320-4] However, these methods are not developed on an industrial scale yet despite the
urgency of the matter.