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Apple wants its supply chain to be 100% carbon neutral by 2030
The Cupertino company says that its wants to bring its entire carbon footprint to net zero – 20 years sooner than the IPCC targets.
Apple has unveiled its plan to become carbon neutral across its entire business, manufacturing supply chain, and product life cycle by 2030. The company is already carbon neutral today for its global corporate operations, however, with this new commitment Apple is aiming to have every sold Apple device having a net zero climate impact by 2030.
To support these efforts, Apple is establishing an Impact Accelerator that will focus on investing in minority-owned businesses that drive positive outcomes in its supply chain and in communities that are disproportionately affected by environmental hazards.
With its 10-year roadmap Apple say is will lower emissions with a series of actions, which include for instance low carbon product design where the company will continue to increase the use of low carbon and recycled materials in its products.
Another part is latest recycling effort, a robot the company is calling “Dave”, who disassembles the Taptic Engine from iPhone to better recover key materials such as rare earth magnets and tungsten while also enabling recovery of steel.
All iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Apple Watch devices released in the past year are made with recycled content, including 100% recycled rare earth elements in the iPhone Taptic Engine.
Apple says it decreased its carbon footprint by 4.3 million metric tons in 2019 through design and recycled content innovations in its products.
The company says that will also expand its energy efficiency. The company aims to identify new ways to lower energy use at its corporate facilities and help its supply chain make the same transition. Through a new partnership with Apple, the US-China Green Fund will invest USD 100 million in accelerated energy efficiency projects for Apple’s suppliers. The number of facilities participating in Apple’s Supplier Energy Efficiency Program grew to 92 in 2019.
Apple says it will remain at 100% renewable energy for its operations — focusing on creating new projects and moving its entire supply chain to clean power. Apple now has commitments from over 70 suppliers to use 100% renewable energy for Apple production.
With of these actions, and several others, Apple plans to reduce emissions by 75% by 2030 while developing carbon removal solutions for the remaining 25% of its entire footprint.
