Here’s Why Apple Built a Recycling Robot that Rips Apart 200 iPhones Per Hour

Apple has announced the creation of Daisy, a robot specifically designed to quickly disassemble several different iPhone models and recycle parts that can be used again.

Daisy is actually a bit of a composite itself—the robot is made up of parts from another recycling robot, Liam, that was created in 2016, the release said. Daisy will be used first in the US and Europe and then expand worldwide.

According to Apple’s release, Daisy will be able take apart nearly 200 iPhones per hour, pushing the company closer to its goal of ending its reliance on mining for vital smartphone materials like cobalt. From every 100,000 iPhones Daisy disassembles, the release said, Apple will be able to harness about 1 kg of gold, 7.5kg of silver, almost two tons of aluminum, and 11kg worth of certain rare-earth elements and minerals like cobalt, palladium, tungsten, tantalum, and tin.

“In recognition of Earth Day, we are making it as simple as possible for our customers to recycle devices and do something good for the planet through Apple GiveBack. We’re also thrilled to introduce Daisy to the world, as she represents what’s possible when innovation and conservation meet,” Lisa Jackson, Apple’s vice president of Environment, Policy, and Social Initiatives, said in the release.

In its Sustainability Report last year, Apple vowed to limit its mining practices, which have been criticized for years by both environmental groups and civil society organizations like Amnesty International, who say the company’s insatiable desire for minerals like cobalt has stoked conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo(DRC) and fueled child labor practices.

Cobalt is necessary for almost all smartphone batteries, and in 2014 UNICEF said nearly 40,000 children worked in mines across the DRC searching for it. The US Department of Labor even went so far as to list Congolese cobalt as “produced by child labor” since 2009.

Apple is hoping Daisy is the first step in the process of divesting from the mining process entirely, writing in their sustainability report that they are “challenging ourselves to one day end our reliance on mining altogether.”

“Traditional supply chains are linear. Materials are mined, manufactured as products, and often end up in landfills after use,” Apple wrote in the report last year. “Then the process starts over and more materials are extracted from the earth for new products. We believe our goal should be a closed-loop supply chain, where products are built using only renewable resources or recycled material.”