News Apple’s carbon footprint is shrinking

[News]

Apple’s making steady progress toward its climate goals, the company’s latest environmental progress report shows.

Its planet-heating pollution shrank by 800,000 metric tons last year compared to 2023, about a 5 percent drop. Looking back over the past decade, Apple says its global greenhouse gas emissions have fallen by more than 60 percent. That’s no easy feat, especially now as the AI arms race pushes other tech companies’ emissions higher.

Apple says its global greenhouse gas emissions have fallen by more than 60 percent
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Procuring renewable energy, designing more sustainable products, and pushing its suppliers to follow suit are key pillars of Apple’s climate plans. The company says its suppliers avoided close to 24 million metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions last year through renewable energy purchases and gains in energy efficiency.

On top of carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels, Apple has to grapple with super potent fluorinated greenhouse gases (F-GHGs) that come from making semiconductors and flat-panel displays. The company says that all of its direct display suppliers have committed to abating at least 90 percent of F-GHGs from facilities used for Apple products. Twenty-six of Apple’s direct semiconductor suppliers have made the same commitment, although Apple hasn’t clarified how big of a chunk that is of its total supply chain for computer chips.

The company also used more recycled materials last year, adding up to nearly a quarter of the materials it shipped in its products. More than 80 percent of the rare earth elements shipped in Apple products — used primarily in magnets for phones and other devices — came from recycled sources in 2024 compared to 75 percent the previous year. Around 99 percent of tungsten, 71 percent of aluminum, 53 percent of lithium, 40 percent of gold, and 76 percent of cobalt in its products came from recycled sources last year, Apple said. Until May 16, the company is offering a 10 percent discount on accessories to customers who bring an eligible item to one of its stores for recycling.

Apple still produced 15.3 million metric tons of gross carbon dioxide emissions in 2024, roughly equivalent to the pollution from 40 gas-fired power plants over a year. The company considers 2015 its baseline year for measuring progress, when it produced 38.4 million metric tons of CO2 emissions.

By 2030, Apple wants to slash its carbon emissions by 75 percent compared to 2015. It aims to eliminate 90 percent of that pollution by 2050, roughly in line with what researchers have found is necessary to meet the Paris agreement goal of stopping climate change.