Apple Releases the Details of its Carbon Footprint

12:35 am, September 25th, 2009, Pete Mortensen

Screen shot 2009-09-24 at 10.36.40 PM

For a company with a hippie-influenced CEO famous for a six month sojourn in India in the early 1970s and widely reported to have had major personal revelations after dropping acid, Apple hasn’t had much of an environmental image over the years. Despite Al Gore’s presence on the company board, Apple didn’t perform free computer recycling until April 2006, far later than Dell and HP.

Apple’s reluctant environmental attitude has been changing, however. Steve Jobs personally made it clear in May 2007 that he intended to change all of that in a letter to the public that temporarily appeased Greenpeace. And now, the company is the first in the industry to provide full disclosure of its carbon footprint.

Anyone can look behind the curtain at Apple.com/environment. It’s pretty amazing. The first thing that jumps out at you is that Apple claims that it is responsible for pumping 10.2 million tons of carbon emissions into the atmosphere every year. That exceeds HP’s 8.4 million tons and dwarfs Dell’s 471,000. That would be horrifying, were it not for the fact that both HP and Dell specifically exclude the carbon impact of people using their products (and some manufacturing impact), which Apple says is 53 percent of its total.

The other major contributor, not surprisingly, is manufacturing, 38 percent of the footprint. I was personally surprised to see that transportation was only 5 percent of Apple’s total, given how many online sales it has for hardware and the fact that all of its product are manufactured in Asia. I imagine this figure would be significantly higher if Apple hadn’t so dramatically reduced the size of its packaging (and products) over the last several years.

All in all, I love this move. It’s about time Apple threw down the gauntlet and tried to lead its industry to places its competitors are uncomfortable going.

Via BusinessWeek

Posted by Pete Mortensen in Apple, News | Comment on this article

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About the author

Pete Mortensen is a design strategist for consulting firm Jump Associates and the co-author of Wired to Care: How Companies Prosper When They Create Widespread Empathy, a book and blog that are significantly more interesting than you might initially think. Pete's particular Apple avocations are both around design--interface and industrial. Follow him on Twitter!

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7 comments

Its good that Apple is going green, but when would you recycle any Apple product, I have thrown windows products in the trash in the past without mercy. even though its not green, not my iMac G4, to me it’s design is artistic.
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3560/3289731353_466b539501.jpg

Poppa, on September 25th, 2009 at 12:45 am

Um… my broken iPod? Everyone’s broken 4G iPods?

Pete Mortensen, on September 25th, 2009 at 12:51 am

MY iPHONE 3GS SPEAKERS ARE NOT WORKING IN STERO MODE(ONLY THE LEFT SIDE IS WORKING!!!!), ANY HELP??

nawa, on September 25th, 2009 at 3:02 am

I love those G4s Poppa. They’re the most brilliantly designed computers in my mind. *to all their own I guess*

But I think what Apple is doing is great. All companies should be like this. Either man up and admit how much damage you’re doing to the earth or change it.

Nathan, on September 25th, 2009 at 3:38 am

Do 3GS iPhones even have two speakers? I have a 3G and I know it only has one.

Brad Murray, on September 25th, 2009 at 6:57 am

Hey nawa, I believe 3Gs is like the previous versions and it only has one speaker. The other “speaker” is the microphone.

Lucas González Day, on September 27th, 2009 at 11:32 pm

With complex supply chains, extensive outsourcing, and frequent product revisions, the electronics industry has long believed that collecting supply chain emission information is prohibitively expensive. But as industry leaders are proving, creating a carbon footprint for any electronic device can be not just fast and cost-effective, but essential to a competing in tomorrow’s market.

Instead of near-sighted focus on regulation, product carbon footprinting helps create a sustainability strategy which can anticipate, rather than respond to, regulatory pressure. Leading companies like Siemens, AMD and Apple have adopted Life Cycle Assessment as the way to fully calculate and disclose the environmental impacts of their products.

We published a Product Carbon Footprint Guide for Electronic Products that describes how it works.

Download: http://www.pe-international.com/consulting/carbon-footprint/product-carbon-footprint/electronics-carbon-footprint-guide/

PE INTERNATIONAL, on September 29th, 2009 at 2:28 am