How Apple turned circular manufacturing into a competitive edge
Apple is realizing real business benefits as it builds a circular manufacturing process across the company. Manufactured using recycled materials and renewable energy, the popular new MacBook Neo is a great illustration of this. Apple says the Neo is manufactured using 45% renewable electricity and holds 60% recycled materials by weight. That recycling includes 90% recycled aluminium and 100% recycled cobalt in the battery. e-Waste becomes input The high-quality enclosure is made through a process in which durable recycled aluminum is pressed into near-final shape using just half the raw material of traditional machining. Apple even leaned into corporate social responsibility when it came to the A18 chip it puts inside these systems, as it originally used ‘binned’ processors originally intended for the iPhone 16 Pro to drive the five core A18. These were rejected processors Apple had in hand anyway, and while it has had to order additional chips to cope with demand for the MacBook A