Mashable:

Liam is a large-scale robot, with 29 freestanding robotic arms at various skill stations. But while most assembly-line robots help put together products you’ll one day hold in your hands, Liam is hard at work disassembling your ruined, returned iPhones.

Liam was revealed at Apple’s spring product launch event on Monday, but Mashable got an exclusive look at the system in action a few days earlier. To keep Liam a secret, I’m told, only a handful of Apple staffers knew of its existence.

This is another of those things that Apple does because it makes economic sense but has the additional benefit of making environmental sense.