Samsung Recycles Discarded Fishing Nets
Global IT companies are joining environmental protection efforts by using recycled materials and reducing packages.
Samsung Electronics is producing products with discarded fishing nets in the Indian Ocean. According to experts, the amount of the waste is increasing by 640,000 tons a year across the world.
Although the collection and recycling processes are far from easy as the waste has been exposed for long to salt and ultraviolet rays and physical properties are lost to a large extent, Samsung Electronics is overcoming the difficulties by innovative regeneration for use in smartphones. The recycled material has been used in Galaxy S22, Tab S8, Book Pro2, etc.
In general, 4.4 tons of carbon is emitted per ton of plastic production. By using plastic recycled from such nets, the emission can be reduced by 1.1 tons, which is equivalent to 120 30-year-old pines’ annual carbon absorption capacity.
Apple, in the meantime, is disassembling and recycling 1.2 million iPhones a year with its recycling robot called Daisy. According to its recent report, recycling made up 59 percent of its total aluminum usage last year, when the company upgraded the robot so that it can handle 23 instead of 15 iPhone models.
“Daisy replaces more than 2,000 tons of mining every time it obtains gold and copper by disassembling and recycling a ton of iPhone components,” Apple said. Its recycling robots also include Taz and Dave. The former separates magnets from audio modules to collect rare-earth elements. The latter separates rare-earth magnets, tungsten and steel for the purpose of recycling.