Media interprets the mystery of Apple's whole machine recycling: 1 ton of iPhones can extract 10 ounces of gold.

1 ton of iPhones can extract 9.27 ounces of gold

　　On August 6, according to foreign media reports, the website 911metalurgist mentioned that when repairing iPhones for users, Apple usually requests "whole unit recycling". The reason for this, besides the difficulty in dismantling the internal parts of the iPhone, is an important factor: 1 ton of iPhones can extract 9.27 ounces of gold, which is higher than the gold content of many high-quality gold ore.

　　The website Socialbarrel stated that a single iPhone 5 contains $1.58 worth of gold, $0.36 worth of silver, $0.12 worth of copper, $0.05 worth of aluminum, and $0.02 worth of platinum. This may not seem like much; however, if it’s 5 million iPhone 5 units, it would amount to $7.9 million worth of gold and $1.8 million worth of silver — the exact number of units sold in the first week of the iPhone 5 launch.

　　The website 911metalurgist conducted further comparative investigations. From one ton of ore mined at the famous Yanacocha Complex gold mine in Peru, mining companies can ultimately extract only 0.03 ounces of gold, whereas one ton of iPhones can yield 9.72 ounces of gold, differing by a factor of 324 times.

　　From one ton of ore mined at the Escondida copper mine in Chile, mining companies can ultimately extract 21 pounds of copper, while one ton of iPhones can yield 283.5 pounds of copper, differing by a factor of 13 times. From one ton of silver ore mined at Cannington in Australia, mining companies extract less silver compared to what can be extracted from one ton of iPhones, with a difference of 6.5 times. However, from one ton of platinum ore mined at the Bushveld Complex in South Africa, the amount of platinum extracted is 3.3 times more than what can be extracted from one ton of iPhones.

　　However, Ken Beyer, CEO of electronics recycling company Cloud Blue, pointed out that it's not just iPhones that have high metal content; other electronic products generally have high metal content as well.