Apple aims for carbon neutral supply chain

CUPERTINO, Calif. – Apple plans to become carbon neutral across its entire business, manufacturing supply chain, and product life cycle by 2030. The company is carbon neutral now for its global corporate operations, and this new commitment means that by 2030, every Apple device will generate net zero climate impact.

In its 2020 Environmental Progress Report Apple details its plans to reduce emissions by 75 percent by 2030 while developing carbon removal solutions for the remaining 25 percent of its comprehensive footprint.

Apple will continue to increase the use of low carbon and recycled materials in its products, innovate in product recycling, and design products to be as energy efficient as possible.

The company’s latest recycling tool — a robot the company is calling “Dave” — disassembles the Taptic Engine from iPhone to better recover key materials such as rare earth magnets and tungsten while also enabling recovery of steel, the next step following its line of “Daisy” iPhone disassembly robots.

The company’s Material Recovery Lab in Austin, Texas, which is focused on developing electronics recycling technology, is now partnering with Carnegie Mellon University to further develop engineering solutions.

All iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Apple Watch devices released in the past year are made with recycled content, including 100 percent recycled rare earth elements in the iPhone Taptic Engine.

Apple decreased its carbon footprint by 4.3 million tonnes in 2019 through design and recycled content innovations in its products. Over the past 11 years, Apple has reduced the average energy needed for product use by 73 percent.

“Businesses have a profound opportunity to help build a more sustainable future, one born of our common concern for the planet we share,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO.

“The innovations powering our environmental journey are not only good for the planet — they’ve helped us make our products more energy efficient and bring new sources of clean energy online around the world.”