content: I think it has more to do with massive amounts of innovation apple has done to minimize the size of its products while attempting to keep them near the cutting edge of their industry. That's their selling point and probably a reason for their prices.  I look at some of the things that come into work and I'm pretty amazed that a device with so little material in it can be so expensive to sell yet worth so little in actual recyclable material.  I should probably stress that there are many different methods for recycling and some are more attuned to effectively dealing with smaller compacted electronics.  Also the Eco statement doesn't really sound like anything groundbreaking. I'll say this not just in regards to Apple.. A big problem is the prevalence of non-removable batteries, especially lithium ion/polymer which is non-renewable.  Depending on the methods used they're often shredded before being extracted manually.  And even then,  manual extraction misses quite a bit. If companies were serious about their environmental impact they would go above and beyond what is regulated, especially for batteries -  which is often just a symbol on the device.