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 Air, the original plan meant it got to sell a product based on chips it wouldn’t otherwise have been able to use. Apple has done this before, such as when it put A15 Bionic chips inside the iPhone SE.
Strategic environmentalism
Effectively, use of binned chips and recycled materials means Apple has been able to find a way to build a $599 laptop that is highly affordable, and it doesn’t compromise design or product quality. This is the power of circular manufacturing, which isn’t just ethically smart, but seems to deliver real business advantages.
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