Apple doesn't pass on climate costs to users, says Jackson

Apple's Lisa Jackson says that buyers do not pay an Apple tax in order to fund the company's work fighting climate change and making its products greener.

While some reports say Apple's environmental efforts far exceed those of its rivals, others accuse the firm of "greenwashing" its figures to look better. Apple itself is calling on its suppliers to decarbonize by 2030, and now it is saying that this work does not make its iPhone more expensive.

"We don't factor in a premium to take care of the work that we're doing," Lisa Jackson, Apple's vice president of Environment, Policy and Social Initiatives, told Reuters.

"I want to do it in a way that other businesses can say this isn't because they're Apple," she said. "It's because they understand how to make clean energy and (recyclable) materials work in the manufacturing chains and drive emissions down."

Jackson says that this is a direct instruction from Apple CEO Tim Cook. Cook has been repeatedly stressing that its Apple Watch is the firm's first carbon-neutral product.

But Jackson, while praising the 78% reduction in its carbon footprint for the Apple Watch, notes that beyond buying carbon offsets, the firm still can't reduce what Reuters calls almost 8 kilograms of emissions from each device including transportation and logistical considerations.

"We just right now don't have the ability to take care" of that, says Jackson. But she does see Apple making an increasing impact. "That's somewhere Apple can invest and then help to scale and bring (other) businesses along."

Speaking at the Reuters Next Conference in New York, Jackson also talked about the practical difficulties of moving to carbon-neutral devices.

"Even making the windmills to generate renewable energy has a carbon footprint," she said, "and so you have to account for that."

24 Comments

Draco 44 comments · 3 Years

About 1 year ago

This woman's mere existence on the payroll proves that Apple is wasting money on these efforts which are nothing more than virtue signaling. "Carbon emissions" go hand-in-hand with a productive, developed economy; those who obsess over carbon emissions would have us living in the stone age. No thanks.

Honkers 156 comments · 1 Year

Draco said:

This woman's mere existence on the payroll proves that Apple is wasting money on these efforts which are nothing more than virtue signaling. "Carbon emissions" go hand-in-hand with a productive, developed economy; those who obsess over carbon emissions would have us living in the stone age. No thanks.

Apple's efforts are taking us back to the stone age? How?

neillwd 49 comments · 14 Years

I guess the money spent comes from the magic fairy pile of funds.

AppleZulu 2176 comments · 8 Years

In economic terms, pollution generated during production of a thing is an externalized cost. That is, it’s a cost of production that is shifted to everyone else, and away from the manufacturer. That savings can either be used to reduce the price tag for consumers and/or simply added to the company’s profit line.

Everyone else who experiences the negative effects of that pollution or pays to clean up that pollution is paying for the items produced while generating that pollution- whether or not they buy or use the item produced.

If the pig farm nearby dumps concentrated pig sh*t on the ground and into the creek that runs behind your house, they’re externalizing their costs to you, whether or not you buy their bacon.

If the pig farm changes their farming practices to appropriately handle, dispose of or recycle their pigsh*t, leaving the creek unmolested, they’re simply taking responsibility and internalizing their own costs. If that increases their price of bacon, that should be entirely appropriate. Letting their customers know that their bacon is a little more expensive (or their shareholders that the profit margin is a little less) because they don’t spew pigshi*t on their neighbors isn’t “virtue signaling,” nor is it making us “live in the stone ages.”

kellie 67 comments · 1 Year

First you have to assume CO2 is a pollutant. In which case you should stop breathing because you’re externalizing the costs of your existence upon me. There is still much debate over the impact of CO2 on climate change. I know the plant world is very happy to see more CO2 in the atmosphere.

Second, China CO2 output is skyrocketing. Any CO2 reductions Apple implements in China are meaningless and have virtually no impact on global CO2 levels.

The costs to reduce CO2 are added to the cost of goods sold. Apple wants to maintain or increase profitability so these new costs are passed along to the consumer. Pollution control either increases costs or reduces profits. Of course governments love the idea of a carbon tax to supposedly address the costs to society of CO2 emissions but it’s just a money grab.

Overall it’s politically correct virtue signaling. If Apple really wanted to address environmental impacts of their products they would make Macs that had user upgradeable SSD’s or RAM. Their current designs decrease the useful life of their products and create massive profit opportunities. iPhones should have upgradeable storage as well.