Environment Friendly? The iPhone 13

If you use a smartphone, you might have heard of Apple, which makes all kinds of electronics. Yes, its logo is an apple with a bite in it. And recently, Apple has rolled out a new phone, the iPhone 13.

OK, maybe you already have a phone, and it might not matter to you. However, listen to why some would want a new one. Every generation of the iPhone and any smart device is a leap in technology, a small innovation. When people like that new feature, they would buy that device. But is that the right thing to do? Well, most people only want a few upgrades, so it’s wasting resources since their original phone was working just fine. If your old one already had problems, then it wouldn’t matter too much, the old one wasn’t so helpful.

Anyway, the innovators at Apple wanted the iPhone 13 to be more environmentally friendly, so they designed it to minimize environmental impacts, with antenna lines using upcycled plastic bottles and recycled tin for the solders on the main logic board.

But what we have covered is only the manufacturing impact, the emissions made when assembling and finding the source materials. Then there is the impact after its use when it gets discarded. It turns into a big loop, leading to old things ending up in landfills. Sometimes, there could be a leak, and stuff drops in places like the ocean, and it starts to pollute the fish and sea creatures. It’s the same loop with most things, manufacture, use, discard, pollute.

So how do we prevent this unfriendly cycle? One option is to not produce waste by using the same things more times, though, by some point, it would probably get broken too. A bag could have a hole in it; A clock could have a loose gear connection; A phone’s hardware or battery could get overheated, all of which would make it useless. Then there is option number two, to recycle more things into new materials to get reused, but that would be more costly and sometimes near impossible for artificial materials.

What do you think about all this? Is technology innovation a good thing? Or do the cons outweigh that? Is recycling the way out of all this? Well, that is for you to ponder. However, you could invite Siri to talk about that. Hey Siri, how are you? Anyway, that is the end of this production from the New News Newsminute. Thank you, and tune in next time for more.