Some iPhones are now made with recycled rare earth minerals. Will that change the rest of the industry?

New smartphones come out like clockwork every year, and most people buy new phones every two years. But that upgrade cycle is terrible for Earth. Smartphones are energy intensive to manufacture and involve mining dozens of different rare earth minerals. Very few parts of the phone can be recycled because extracting those metals is also difficult and energy intensive. But last week, Apple announced it’s cracked part of that nut. It found a supplier of recycled rare earth materials, and now Apple is putting them in its newest iPhones. The company says this is a first in the industry.