Your old iPhone is literally a gold mine, Apple is making a tonne of money by recycling it

Anyone thinking that their old gadgets are worthless may want to take a look at Apple's latest environmental report.

The company revealed that it has harvested over a tonne of gold - 2,204lbs - from reclaimed iPhones, iPads and Macs in 2015.

Apple has recently made a big deal out of recycling its old handsets and saving the metal from ending up in landfill.

It recently revealed a specially-built robot called Liam who's sole job was to rip old iPhones to shreds and extract the metals.

According to a report by CNN Money back in 2011, each iPhone contains around 0.034g of gold. Which translates to roughly £1.28.

It's used in the iGadgets because it's a good conductor of electricity and - unlike the cheaper copper - it doesn't corrode as quickly.

And it's not just gold that Apple was able to pluck out of our reused phones. The company also grabbed 6,612lbs of silver and 44,080lbs of lead. It also raked in a lot of copper and aluminium - two important components of the iPhone's all-metal body.

"We invented Liam, a line of robots designed to disassemble 1.2 million phones a year, sorting all their high-quality components and reducing the need to mine more resources from the earth," explained Apple.

“This allows us to recover the materials, high-quality materials, and reintroduce them into the global supply," said Lisa Jackson, Apple 's vice president of environment, policy and social initiatives.

"Ultimately, our goal is to create breakthroughs that allow us to reuse those high quality materials in our own products."

In total, Apple managed to save an estimated £28 million last year just from recycling its gadgets.

The company offers both a trade-in and a recycling scheme where customers can either get money off upgrades or dispose of their old tech safely.