This is no small feat. Apple uses dozens of third-party suppliers to produce components found in devices like the iPhone, and all of those use their own third-party suppliers to provide yet more parts and raw materials. It makes for a vast web of companies, organizations, and actors; Apple directly purchases few of the raw materials that wind up in its products. That’s true of many companies that manufacture smartphones, computers, or complex machinery—most rely on a tangled web of third-party suppliers to produce their stuff.
It means your iPhone begins with thousands of miners working in often brutal conditions on nearly every continent to dredge up the raw elements that make its components possible.
What are those raw materials exactly? What is the iPhone actually composed of at its most elemental level? To find out, I asked David Michaud, a mining consultant who runs 911 Metallurgist, to help me determine the chemical composition of the iPhone. To our knowledge, it’s the first time such an analysis has been conducted. Here’s how it worked.
I bought a brand-new iPhone 6 at the flagship Fifth Avenue Apple Store in Manhattan in June of 2016 and shipped it to Michaud. He sent it to a metallurgy lab, which performed the following tests:
First, they weighed the device; it’s 129 grams, as Apple advertises. The iPhone was then set inside an impact machine used for pulverizing rock, where, in a contained environment, a 55-kilogram hammer was dropped on it from 1.1 meters above. The lithium-ion battery caught fire. The entire mass of the phone was then recovered and pulverized. “It surprised me how difficult it was to destroy,” Michaud says. The materials were then extracted and analyzed.
From that process, the scientists were able to identify the elements that make up the iPhone.
“It’s twenty-four percent aluminum,” Michaud says. “You can see the outside case as being aluminum. You wouldn’t think that the case weighs a quarter of the device.… Aluminum is very light. It’s cheap; it’s a dollar a pound.”
The iPhone is 3 percent tungsten, which is commonly mined in Congo and used in vibrators and on the screen’s electrodes. Cobalt, a key part of the batteries, is mined in Congo too. Gold’s the most valuable metal inside the device, and there isn’t much of it.
“There were no precious metals detected in any major quantities, maybe a dollar or two,” Michaud says. “Nickel is worth nine dollars a pound and there’s two grams of it.” It’s used in the iPhone’s microphone.
There’s more arsenic in the iPhone than any of the precious metals, about 0.6 grams, though the concentration is too low to be toxic. The amount of gallium was a surprise. “It’s the only metal that is liquid at room temperature,” Michaud says. “It’s a by-product. You have to mine coal to get gallium.” The amount of lead, however, was not. “The world has tried very hard to get rid of lead, but it is difficult to do.”
The oxygen, hydrogen, and carbon found are associated with different alloys used throughout the phone. Indium tin oxide, for instance, is used as a conductor for the touchscreen. Aluminum oxides are found in the casing, and silicon oxides are used in the microchip, the iPhone’s brain. That’s where the arsenic and gallium go too.
Silicon accounts for 6 percent of the phone, the microchips inside. The batteries are a lot more than that: They’re made of lithium, cobalt, and aluminum.
iPhone 6, 16GB model
Element: Aluminum
Chemical Symbol: Al
Percent of iPhone by weight: 24.14
Grams used in iPhone: 31.14
Average cost per gram: $ 0.0018
Value of element in iPhone: $ 0.055
Element: Arsenic
Chemical Symbol: As
Percent of iPhone by weight: 0.00
Grams used in iPhone: 0.01
Average cost per gram: $ 0.0022
Value of element in iPhone: $ -
Element: Gold
Chemical Symbol: Au
Percent of iPhone by weight: 0.01
Grams used in iPhone: 0.014
Average cost per gram: $ 40.00
Value of element in iPhone: $ 0.56
Element: Bismuth
Chemical Symbol: Bi
Percent of iPhone by weight: 0.02
Grams used in iPhone: 0.02
Average cost per gram: $ 0.0110
Value of element in iPhone: $ 0.0002
Element: Carbon
Chemical Symbol: C
Percent of iPhone by weight: 15.39
Grams used in iPhone: 19.85
Average cost per gram: $ 0.0022
Value of element in iPhone: $ -
Element: Calcium
Chemical Symbol: Ca
Percent of iPhone by weight: 0.34
Grams used in iPhone: 0.44
Average cost per gram: $ 0.0044
Value of element in iPhone: $ 0.002
Element: Chlorine
Chemical Symbol: Cl
Percent of iPhone by weight: 0.01
Grams used in iPhone: 0.01
Average cost per gram: $ 0.0011
Value of element in iPhone: $ -
Element: Cobalt
Chemical Symbol: Co
Percent of iPhone by weight: 5.11
Grams used in iPhone: 6.59
Average cost per gram: $ 0.0396
Value of element in iPhone: $ 0.261
Element: Chrome
Chemical Symbol: Cr
Percent of iPhone by weight: 3.83
Grams used in iPhone: 4.94
Average cost per gram: $ 0.0020
Value of element in iPhone: $ 0.010
Element: Copper
Chemical Symbol: Cu
Percent of iPhone by weight: 6.08
Grams used in iPhone: 7.84
Average cost per gram: $ 0.0059
Value of element in iPhone: $ 0.047
Element: Iron
Chemical Symbol: Fe
Percent of iPhone by weight: 14.44
Grams used in iPhone: 18.63
Average cost per gram: $ 0.0001
Value of element in iPhone: $ 0.002
Element: Gallium
Chemical Symbol: Ga
Percent of iPhone by weight: 0.01
Grams used in iPhone: 0.01
Average cost per gram: $ 0.3304
Value of element in iPhone: $ 0.003
Element: Hydrogen
Chemical Symbol: H
Percent of iPhone by weight: 4.28
Grams used in iPhone: 5.52
Average cost per gram: $ -
Value of element in iPhone: $ -
Element: Potassium
Chemical Symbol: K
Percent of iPhone by weight: 0.25
Grams used in iPhone: 0.33
Average cost per gram: $ 0.0003
Value of element in iPhone: $ -
Element: Lithium
Chemical Symbol: Li
Percent of iPhone by weight: 0.67
Grams used in iPhone: 0.87
Average cost per gram: $ 0.0198
Value of element in iPhone: $ 0.017
Element: Magnesium
Chemical Symbol: Mg
Percent of iPhone by weight: 0.51
Grams used in iPhone: 0.65
Average cost per gram: $ 0.0099
Value of element in iPhone: $ 0.006
Element: Manganese
Chemical Symbol: Mn
Percent of iPhone by weight: 0.23
Grams used in iPhone: 0.29
Average cost per gram: $ 0.0077
Value of element in iPhone: $ 0.002
Element: Molybdenum
Chemical Symbol: Mo
Percent of iPhone by weight: 0.02
Grams used in iPhone: 0.02
Average cost per gram: $ 0.0176
Value of element in iPhone: $ 0.000
Element: Nickel
Chemical Symbol: Ni
Percent of iPhone by weight: 2.10
Grams used in iPhone: 2.72
Average cost per gram: $ 0.0099
Value of element in iPhone: $ 0.027
Element: Oxygen
Chemical Symbol: O
Percent of iPhone by weight: 14.50
Grams used in iPhone: 18.71
Average cost per gram: $ -
Value of element in iPhone: $ -
Element: Phosphorus
Chemical Symbol: P
Percent of iPhone by weight: 0.03
Grams used in iPhone: 0.03
Average cost per gram: $ 0.0001
Value of element in iPhone: $ -
Element: Lead
Chemical Symbol: Pb
Percent of iPhone by weight: 0.03
Grams used in iPhone: 0.04
Average cost per gram: $ 0.0020
Value of element in iPhone: $ -
Element: Sulfur
Chemical Symbol: S
Percent of iPhone by weight: 0.34
Grams used in iPhone: 0.44
Average cost per gram: $ 0.0001
Value of element in iPhone: $ -
Element: Silicon
Chemical Symbol: Si
Percent of iPhone by weight: 6.31
Grams used in iPhone: 8.14
Average cost per gram: $ 0.0001
Value of element in iPhone: $ 0.001
Element: Tin
Chemical Symbol: Sn
Percent of iPhone by weight: 0.51
Grams used in iPhone: 0.66
Average cost per gram: $ 0.0198
Value of element in iPhone: $ 0.013
Element: Tantalum
Chemical Symbol: Ta
Percent of iPhone by weight: 0.02
Grams used in iPhone: 0.02
Average cost per gram: $ 0.1322
Value of element in iPhone: $ 0.003
Element: Titanium
Chemical Symbol: Ti
Percent of iPhone by weight: 0.23
Grams used in iPhone: 0.30
Average cost per gram: $ 0.0198
Value of element in iPhone: $ 0.006
Element: Tungsten
Chemical Symbol: W
Percent of iPhone by weight: 0.02
Grams used in iPhone: 0.02
Average cost per gram: $ 0.2203
Value of element in iPhone: $ 0.004
Element: Vanadium
Chemical Symbol: V
Percent of iPhone by weight: 0.03
Grams used in iPhone: 0.04
Average cost per gram: $ 0.0991
Value of element in iPhone: $ 0.004
Element: Zinc
Chemical Symbol: Zn
Percent of iPhone by weight: 0.54
Grams used in iPhone: 0.69
Average cost per gram: $ 0.0028
Value of element in iPhone: $ 0.002
TOTAL
Percent of iPhone by weight: 100%
Grams used in iPhone: 129 grams
Value of element in iPhone: $ 1.03
And there are elements locked inside each iPhone that constitute too small a percentage of the phone’s mass to show up in the analysis. In addition to precious metals like silver, there are crucial elements known as rare earth metals, like yttrium, neodymium, and cerium.
All of these elements, precious or abundant, have to be pulled out of the earth before they can be mixed into alloys, molded into compounds, or melted into the plastics that make up the iPhone. Apple does not disclose where its nonconflict minerals come from, but many sources have been reported over the years; here’s a quick sampling of how some of the crucial elements in the iPhone are mined.
Aluminum
Aluminum is the most abundant metal on Earth. It’s also the most abundant metal in your iPhone, due to its anodized casing. Aluminum comes from bauxite, which is often strip-mined, an operation that can devastate the natural landscape and imperil natural habitats. And it takes four tons of bauxite to produce one ton of aluminum, creating a load of excess waste. Aluminum smelters suck down a full 3.5 percent of the globe’s power. In the process, they release greenhouse gases that are 9,200 times more potent than carbon dioxide.
Cobalt
Most of the cobalt that ends up in the iPhone is in its lithium-ion battery, and it comes from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. In 2016, the Washington Post found laborers working around the clock with hand tools in small-scale pits in DRC cobalt mines. They rarely wore protective gear, and the mines were almost totally unregulated. Child laborers toiled here too. “Deaths and injuries are common,” the investigation found.
Tantalum
Around the time that Apple announced it had reaped the largest corporate profits of any public company in history, it verified that its tantalum suppliers were conflict-free. Tantalum was, for a long time, sourced largely from the DRC, where rebels and the army alike forced children and slaves to work in mines and used the mining profits to sustain their campaigns of violence. Mass rapes, child soldiers, and genocides have been bankrolled by the 3TG.
Rare Earth Metals
The iPhone’s hundreds of components require a suite of rare earth metals—such as cerium, which is used in a solvent to polish touchscreens and to color glass, and neodymium, which makes powerful, tiny magnets and shows up in a lot of consumer electronic parts—and mining these elements is a complex, sometimes toxic affair.
Most rare earth metals come from a single place: Inner Mongolia, a semiautonomous zone in northern China. There, the by-products from mining have created a lake that’s so gray, so drenched in toxic waste, that it’s been dubbed “the worst place on earth” by the BBC. “Our lust for iPhones, flat-screen televisions, and the like created this lake,” BBC investigator Tim Maughan, one of the few journalists to actually see the lake, told me.
Rare earths aren’t rare in the way we typically interpret that term. They’re not scarce; workers simply have to mine an awful lot of earth to get a small amount of, say, neodymium, which makes for an energy- and resource-intensive process and results in a lot of waste. Apple—and just about everyone else—outsources the operation to China, largely because the country doesn’t have the environmental regulations that other nations do. (A U.S. company called Molycorp tried to mine cleanly for rare earth metals in the southwestern desert; it went bankrupt in 2014.) The BBC investigation revealed that the lake isn’t just toxic, it’s radioactive—clay collected from its bed tested at three times higher than the background radiation.
Tin
Bangka Island, in Indonesia, is home to about half of the tin smelters on Apple’s list. This is probably because, as a Bloomberg BusinessWeek report revealed, it’s where their manufacturing partner Foxconn sources its tin. The Bangka Island mines are chaotic and lethal. Miners flock to thousands of small-scale pits, each fifteen to forty feet deep, many of them illegal, and dig the tin out of the ground with pickaxes or by hand. The mine bosses frequently use tractors to create pits that leave almost vertical and unstable walls of earth that are apt to come crashing down on the laborers. In 2014, the fatality rate was one miner a week. After Bloomberg published that report, Apple sent an envoy to Indonesia and pledged to work with local groups and the environmental organization Friends of the Earth, though it’s not entirely clear what the impact has been. Meanwhile, the mining operations have razed large parts of the island’s flora, and miners have taken to dredging the seabed for ore, plowing through the reefs and aquatic habitats.
Michaud crunched the numbers to generate an estimate of how much earth had to be mined to create a single iPhone. Based on data provided by mining operations around the world, he determined that approximately 34 kilograms (75 pounds) of ore would have to be mined to produce the metals that make up a 129-gram iPhone. The raw metals in the whole thing are worth about one dollar total, and 56 percent of that value is the tiny amount of gold inside. Meanwhile, 92 percent of the rock mined yields metals that make up just 5 percent of the device’s weight. It takes a lot of mining—and refining—to get small amounts of the iPhone’s rarer trace elements, in other words.
A
billion iPhones had been sold by 2016, which translates into 34 billion kilos (37 million tons) of mined rock. That’s a lot of moved earth—and it leaves a mark. Each ton of ore processed for metal extraction requires around three tons of water. This means that each iPhone “polluted” around 100 liters (or 26 gallons) of water, Michaud tells me. Producing 1 billion iPhones has fouled 100 billion liters (or 26 billion gallons) of water.
Furthermore, extracting gold from a ton of ore typically requires about two and a half pounds (1,136 grams) of cyanide, Michaud says, as the chemical is used to dissolve and separate rock from precious metals. Because up to 18 of the 34 kilos of ore mined to produce each iPhone are mined in pursuit of gold, it would require 20.5 grams of cyanide to free enough gold to produce an iPhone.
So, according to Michaud’s calculations, producing a single iPhone requires mining 34 kilos of ore, 100 liters of water, and 20.5 grams of cyanide, per industry average.
“That’s what’s shocking!” he says.
Deep in a mine shaft at Cerro Rico, Marie, Jason, and I are ducking under collapsed support beams, checking out the mineral deposits in the rock seams, shining our headlamps down forks in the tunnel that look like they might never end. It’s deep-space black down here. Jason and I are both pretty tall and lanky. For stretches, the tunnel is only four feet high, forcing us to squat and waddle. The walls close in tight, and the air feels thick. Jason starts to get anxious. So I start to get anxious. Our guide takes the top off the bottle of moonshine we’ve brought as a gift for the miners and holds the bottle under our noses. It is indeed pretty efficient at delivering an ugly wake-up jolt.
A second later, my head hits the ceiling and a spill of sediment dusts my face. I’m taking video and blurry flash photos on my iPhone. The deposits on the walls—sulfur, maybe—are oddly beautiful.
Jason looks pale. I get it. The whole mountain is a ticking geological time bomb. It feels stupid to have this fear after a brief jog into a tunnel where thousands of people work every day, but here we are. Still, I bet most iPhone owners would start to lose it if they had to spend more than twenty minutes down here. Jason wants to turn back.
Before I know it, we’re winding back through the dark, and finally that little circle of light comes around a corner.
The One Device Page 6