What Really Happens When You Trade In a Phone at the Apple Store

Few workers at the recycling plant had access to the secure room that some called the “Apple cage.” Behind its locked door, past a metal detector and under surveillance cameras, a small team of employees of GEEP Canada Inc., an electronic-waste processor north of Toronto, sifted through pallet-size boxes full of used iPhones. Prying each one open manually at a set of tables, they ripped out batteries and other parts and tossed the components into sorting bins. When enough material piled up in one of the bins, it was forklifted to a larger area of the warehouse, where its ...