Apple kicked off its annual iPhone extravaganza with a slickly produced, Octavia Spencer–starring video espousing its environmental bonafides. So it’s perhaps unsurprising that most commentary skewed toward skepticism.
And not without good reason. Apple is the world’s most valuable company. It didn’t get there by telling people to buy less. Plus, greenwashing is a time-honored tradition. Corporate environmental claims are met with skepticism by default.
But there’s reason to believe that Apple might actually mean it.
Since Tim Cook took over the helm in 2011, Apple has become increasingly ambitious (and vocal) about improving its environmental performance. First the company bought enough renewable energy to power its direct operations. In 2016, it started using recycled materials in its products, starting with tin solder on the iPhone 6S logic board. Then in 2020, the company set a goal of zeroing out the carbon emissions of all its products by 2030.
It’s a significant goal, and one that Apple should be held to. While there are still seven years until the deadline, so far the company has made solid progress on it.
Apple’s approach to getting to net zero for its products is notable in that it extends to third-party manufacturers, shipping and even consumer use — deep into Scope 3 territory.
Of all the carbon pollution a company has to eliminate, Scope 3 emissions — those that the company has no direct control over — are by far the hardest. Companies have limited control over how third-party suppliers power their factories and offices or source their materials, making it a challenging part of the equation. But they do have some leverage through the contracts they sign. And in contract negotiations, Apple tends to have a lot of leverage.
Fortunately for Apple, its products require a lot of electricity to manufacture. Chips are especially energy-intensive to produce, making up a significant fraction of each product’s overall carbon footprint. Semiconductor manufacturing isn’t squeaky clean, but it also isn’t dependent on dirty fossil fuels like aviation or steel manufacturing. An electron is an electron, and a semiconductor fab doesn’t care if it’s run on fossil or renewable power so long as it gets what it needs. Eliminating those emissions isn’t necessarily cheap or easy, but it’s a problem for which a straightforward solution exists. Not every industry has that luxury today.
Consumers sign no such contracts with Apple, though, and so the company doesn’t have the same leverage to force them to buy renewable power. Even if they did, it’s not feasible yet everywhere. The electricity people use to charge their devices can come from almost anything. It might be solar or wind, but it also might be the brownest, dirtiest coal imaginable.
Apple’s solution is simple and elegant: Invest in renewable power on behalf of the consumer. By adding new, carbon-free generating capacity to the grid — enough to charge each Apple Watch for its expected life — the company is effectively eliminating emissions for which it previously had no direct or even indirect control. The grid might be greening, but to meet a net-zero goal anytime in the next couple decades, companies will need to move faster than the grid allows. Directly investing in renewables for consumers lets Apple get there faster and speeds overall decarbonization in the process.
The other thing Apple did right is that it reduced first and offset second. It did buy offsets (more on that later), but by trimming the footprint first, it went after what’s actually driving the carbon impact of the Series 9 rather than rely on offsets, which in many ways are the easy way out.
Now, a few caveats: Apple is offsetting the 22% of the footprint that it couldn’t eliminate. Ideally, that figure would be smaller and best if it approached zero. But the economy is nowhere near fully circular, so offsets are the least bad option. Still, they’re not perfect. Recently, Verra, the largest issuer of voluntary carbon credits, was caught reportedly selling offsets for forests that were at no risk of destruction, making them effectively worthless. Apple doesn’t appear to rely solely on Verra, and no doubt the company does its own due diligence on any projects it funds. Yet the fact that such a scandal could exist illustrates just how much further voluntary carbon markets have to go.
The new Apple Watch is a first step, and while it’s a modest one, it’s exactly where you’d expect Apple to start. The company doesn’t dive headfirst into changes. Rather, it tests new directions in one part of its lineup. Apple Silicon didn’t burst onto the scene all at once; it started in the iPhone. The company debuted sapphire glass on its iPhone camera lenses first, and once it became confident in its manufacturers’ abilities, it rolled it out on the Watch. Recycled materials have followed the same path, starting with small pieces before working their way into major components.
In many ways, the Apple Watch is the perfect product for the company to tackle first. Its components and manufacturing techniques mirror the iPhone’s and the Mac’s, just on a smaller scale. Why not start small and use the product to work out the kinks before betting big on something like the iPhone?
Nobody expects a country’s economy to decarbonize in a few years, and the same should be true of a company like Apple. (Its annual revenue is about the same as Denmark’s GDP, so it isn’t a horrible comparison.) Perhaps the heavy-handed marketing wasn’t to people’s liking, which, fair. But the fact remains that Apple is at the vanguard. The climate would benefit from other companies following the company’s lead.
That’s not to say that Apple gets a free pass. Should it be praised for its actions? In this case, I’d argue yes. Yet on the other hand, the company has set some very aggressive targets, and it’s absolutely fair for consumers and the press to hold them to that. As Ronald Reagan once said: Trust, but verify.
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