In most cities there are shops that will replace cracked screens, do basic damage repair etc on iPads, iPods, iPhones etc. They seem to manage just fine with the units being glued.
When replacing a part the glue poses no issue. But recycling a part is different. The glue that is bonded to the glass etc can be difficult to remove, as is claimed above. Full removal is necessary to ensure the recycled product is not contaminated.
Moving beyond that, this raises the cost of recycling the glass, which in turn raises the cost of buying the recycled glass. This makes it a less attractive deal to manufacturers than new glass, thus giving companies less incentive to process the glass with glue.
Well yeah, there's the problem that glass is trivially easy to manufacture from sand, and the amount of labor and energy use to remove and process these screens is greater than the savings, especially since most glass these days that is sent for recycling is thrown into giant mountains of unwanted glass that is never used by anyone. Also, if you have to use a bunch of highly toxic solvents that are dangerous to work with so people can by hand remove the glue before even getting to that point, one may reasonably ask what exactly about this process is green.
most glass these days that is sent for recycling is thrown into giant mountains of unwanted glass that is never used by anyone.
That isn't generally true, mostly because it is valuable as long as you have glass production nearby. The UK does have a mountain of green glass as it drinks loads of wine but doesn't produce much. But this is apparently quite unusual, at least according to the Economist. - http://www.economist.com/node/9249262
All things considered, who really cares about the glass. Glass is not toxic. Throw it in a landfill. The batteries are what you want to get, that's where the nasty stuff is. And what kind of glue are we talking about? Something so strong that you can't pry it apart? Seems kind of unlikely, but I don't know. I'd imagine something more like a semi-flexible rubber cement.
I believe the batteries are the big problem. With respect to the glue, ifixit reports:
Electronics recyclers need to take out hazardous components such as batteries before sending computers through their shredders, because batteries can catch fire when punctured.
When we originally tore down the Retina MacBook Pro, we could not separate the battery from the upper case. The next day, after a lot of elbow grease, we were finally able to get them apart—but in the process punctured the battery, leaking hazardous goo all over.
They are fairly practiced at taking things apart, including delicate and glued-together equipment, so I'd conclude that it is a fairly strong and difficult to work with glue.
iFixit evaluates for repairability, not for recyclability.
For example, on http://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/MacBook-Pro-with-Retina-Displ... they state "
To complicate matters further, the TrackPad cable lies underneath the battery. Attempting to pry the battery off the upper case could easily sever the fragile cable, which would be bad." That is of no concern when recycling the device.
So, is there a problem recycling these new devices? I would guess so, but I do not rule out that there is a simple process to separate these parts, e.g. by heating them to a certain temperature, putting them in a microwave just long enough, or by taking apart the battery before removing it from the glass. A dedicated recycler could use some specialist procedure for recycling these things. I do doubt that that would be economically feasible, though. The amount of glass involved is just too small.
Also, chances are that that will lead to lower degree of recycling, just as white glass can be recycled better than green or brown glass, and as car windshields, being layered with some plastic, can be recycled, but likely not into new car windshields.
Why not, as long as that 'certain temperature' is well below the temperature at which the battery spontaneously ignites? Also, for recycling, one could deplete the battery before trying to separate its container from the other parts.
I still think these things will get recycled into low-quality stuff such as concrete filler, but as I said, I do not rule out that there is a relatively easy way to separate the parts that iFixit does not know about.
That would work fine in a lab, but is way too expensive for recycling.
Those ovens with accurate temperature control and very expensive, and pretty small. And manually hooking up each battery to a discharging station is far too complicated to do in bulk.
You don't need to recycle anything at all as "concrete filler" sand works just fine.
Not all use glue, and It is possible that apple is changing its glue and/or using more.
Most likely both. Maybe they have new glue and glue remover and want to make sure all repairs go through them, because only they have the secret glue remover.
But that would be far fetched maybe?
/speculations
"The glue that is bonded to the glass etc can be difficult to remove, as is claimed above. Full removal is necessary to ensure the recycled product is not contamination."
Don't most recyclers just toss everything in a big shredder, run the bits and pieces through mechanical separators, and smelt each stream of fragments. It's not like bottle recyclers get all bent out of shape if there is still glue and labels on the bottles.
In most cities there are shops that will replace cracked screens, do basic damage repair etc on iPads, iPods, iPhones etc. They seem to manage just fine with the units being glued.
I am guessing the issue is purely a cost one.