iPhone 18 Pro’s Recycled Materials, Component by Component: What Apple’s Environmental Report Lists

Apple’s Product Environmental Report for iPhone 18 Pro lists nine separate recycled-material figures for named internal parts, each with its own percentage. That level of component-by-component detail never appears on the phone’s marketing pages, which stop at a single headline number: 40 percent recycled content overall.

The breakdown sits in a PDF, not on iPhone 18 Pro’s own product page. It covers the battery, the Taptic Engine, the cameras, Camera Control, the MagSafe charger, the circuit boards, the magnets, and the enclosure itself, and it is the only place Apple states what several of those parts are actually made of.

Key facts

The battery carries two figures, not one

Apple states the battery separately from the enclosure: 100 percent recycled cobalt and 95 percent recycled lithium. Neither number appears on the iPhone 18 Pro specs page or in Apple’s September 9 announcement; both come only from the environmental PDF. The same two-figure pattern, one material at 100 percent and a second just under it, repeats for several other components below, which is part of why a single “40 percent” headline understates how granular Apple’s own accounting actually gets.

Camera Control and the cameras share a line

Apple’s materials table groups Camera Control with the camera system rather than treating it as a separate control: “100 percent recycled gold wire in all cameras and Camera Control.” That is the only place Apple names a material inside the button at all.

The Taptic Engine, the MagSafe charger, and the circuit boards

Three more lines apply to parts that never get a mention outside this document. The Taptic Engine is “100 percent recycled copper wire and tungsten.” The MagSafe charger, sold separately, is “100 percent recycled copper foil and wire and recycled tin solder.” Every printed circuit board inside the phone carries “100 percent recycled gold plating and tin solder.” A fourth line covers “100 percent recycled rare earth elements in all magnets,” which includes the MagSafe ring.

Steel where the marketing says aluminum

The enclosure itself is 85 percent recycled aluminum, the figure closest to what Apple’s 18 Pro vs. 17 Pro comparisons already describe as an aluminum unibody design. But two other structural parts are steel, not aluminum: the battery enclosure and the vapor chamber chassis are each 80 percent recycled steel. Apple’s consumer pages never draw that distinction; it exists only in the recycling table.

iPhone 18 Pro’s report was not published alone. Apple’s environmental reports index lists separate PDFs for iPhone Duo, Apple Watch Series 12, Apple Watch Ultra 4, and AirPods 5, all dated the same September 9. One detail stands out: iPhone Duo’s report is already live even though the device itself does not ship until October 23, so its component-by-component recycled figures became public more than five weeks before anyone can buy one.

Placed next to the rest of the September 2026 lineup, iPhone 18 Pro’s 40 percent overall recycled-content figure matches AirPods 5 and Apple Watch Series 12, both also stated at 40 percent, while iPhone Duo’s equivalent figure is lower, at 35 percent.

What Apple has not said

Apple has not published a dimension, weight, or unit count for the Taptic Engine, the vapor chamber chassis, or any circuit board, and it has not said whether any of these recycled-content figures changed from iPhone 17 Pro. iPhone 18 Pro reaches stores Friday, September 18; the Product Environmental Report remains the only source for every figure in the table above.