In celebration of Earth Day this coming Sunday, Apple will be hosting two special Today at Apple sessions at their Union Square store in downtown San Francisco.
Apple yesterday announced a really impressive achievement: its entire global operations are now 100% powered by renewable energy. That encompasses everything from retail stores and local offices through data centers to its Apple Park campus.
Unlike many companies, Apple doesn’t cheat by buying offsets.
“You could go out and buy carbon credits and offsets–nope,” says Jackson firmly. “You could go out and wait for other people to do projects and say ‘Can I have some of that please? How much will you charge me for some of your clean energy?’ No.”
Last time it updated us, the figure was 96%. When you don’t cheat, getting there with that last few percent is a far bigger achievement than it might sound, and I think Apple deserves every credit for this …
[Update: Apple has shared a press release on its environmental progress and hitting 100% renewable energy.]
Apple has finally hit its goal of running its own operations off 100% renewable energy. All Apple facilities, from Apple Park to its data centers to worldwide fleet of Apple retail stores, are now solely powered by green energy. Last year, it was close at 96%, but now it’s finally hit the magic 100 number.
This figure does not include Apple’s third-party suppliers or manufacturers, although the company is convincing many of those to switch to 100% renewable sources too …
Apple is speaking out against the Environmental Protection Agency’s plan to repeal efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, Reuters reports. In a new filing, Apple cites “increased investment uncertainty” for the company and its supplier partners if the Clean Power Plan is reversed.
Last month, Apple shared an environmental report specific to the iPhone X. One detail in the report is that “100 percent of packaging fibers are sourced from responsibly managed forests, bamboo, waste sugarcane, or recycled paper.” Now, Apple has released a white paper thoroughly detailing its “Paper and Packaging Strategy”.
Apple is proud of its environmental credentials, and publishes an annual Environmental Responsibility Report to describe its goals and the actions taken to achieve them. But the company has now gone further, and published a specific environmental report on the upcoming iPhone X.
The four-page report details everything from the breakdown of materials used to produce both the phone and its packaging, through to the greenhouse gas emissions involved in every stage from production to eventual recycling …
Apple shared a series of lighthearted animated videos for Earth Day back in April and today the company has released another new video in the same style. This one highlights the company’s efforts with sustainable packaging…
A Greenpeace campaign to highlight the environmental impact of planned obsolescence has slated iPads and MacBooks for their poor repairability scores, but praises the iPhone 7.
It follows a separate report earlier this year in which Greenpeace labelled Apple the most environmentally friendly tech company in the world …
In celebration of Earth Day, Apple executive Lisa Jackson this week sat down with John Gruber for an in-depth interview. Airing as part of Gruber’s “The Talk Show” podcast, the interview discussed a variety of environmental topics, especially relating to Apple’s own efforts…
Apple’s commitment to environmental sustainability is well established, but the company is going one step further in its new Danish data center. In addition to powering the center entirely from renewable energy, the company is capturing the waste heat generated and feeding it into a district heating system, to warm local homes …
Just like Apple itself is doing, many app developers are celebrating Earth Day with new apps and promotions. After Ice is a new app that uses augmented reality to simulate the effects of climate change around the world…
Apple has published a new series of videos in celebration of Earth Day that both highlight the company’s green energy efforts and explain some of the science behind clean energy today. The video series includes comical illustrations and narrations from Apple execs including VP Lisa Jackson.
There’s an acronym widely used for setting goals: SMART. There are a few different versions of this floating around, but one common one is that objectives should be Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-bound. Apple’s stated commitment to stop mining the earth and build all products from recycled materials would seem to fail on two of these criteria.
It isn’t currently achievable. It simply isn’t realistic today for Apple to obtain all of the materials it requires in the quantities it needs at a viable price without mining some of them, and there’s no saying when it might become so.
It’s also not time-bound. Apple has given no indication of when it might reach its goal. Anyone can claim almost anything will be achieved – however far-fetched – without specifying a timeframe.
But while Apple’s objective isn’t SMART, that doesn’t make it either meaningless or useless …
Despite the recent change of president in the United States, Apple is maintaining its environmental pledge made to the previous administration, Bloomberg reports. Apple joined other companies including Google and Microsoft in signing a statement backing renewable energy efforts.
Apple has long been committed to using renewable energy for its own operations, and in 2015 extended that goal to its suppliers, starting with China. In its 2016 supplier responsibility report, the company said that its energy efficiency program had reduced carbon emissions by more than 13,800 metric tons.
Today, Apple has announced that the program has reached Japan, with component supplier Ibiden pledging to power all of its Apple manufacturing with 100 percent renewable energy …
Greenpeace has described Apple as the most environmentally friendly tech company in the world for the third year running, thanks to its high use of renewable energy and the leadership role it takes in encouraging its supply chain to follow its own example.
Apple retains its leadership spot for the third year in a row among platform operators. Both Apple and Google continue to lead the sector in matching their growth with an equivalent or larger supply of renewable energy, and both companies continue to use their influence to push governments as well as their utility and IT sector vendors to increase access to renewable energy for their operations.
Apple scored 83% in Greenpeace’s clean energy index, and was awarded grade A in four out of five additional categories …
Zero Waste means nothing sent to landfill sites
Apple has announced that all 14 of its final assembly plants in China are now zero-waste compliant, meaning that none of the waste is sent to landfill. Waste products are instead recycled, re-used, composted or burned to generate energy.
Typically, paper and cardboard are sent to paper mills for recycling, glass & metal is melted for re-use, plastic is recycled into packaging materials and food is composted …
Apple’s VP of environment, policy and social initiatives Lisa Jackson has tweeted congratulations to chip supplier TSMC on doubling its use of renewable energy this year.
Apple is going all out to promote Earth Day this year. App Store WWF fundraisers, free iBook environmental lessons on iPads, green Apple Store shirts and logos, and last night’s iMessage and renewable energy video so far …
Apple’s ninth annual Environmental Responsibility Report summarises the company’s work on its three environmental priorities of renewable energy, safer materials & processes and conserving resources. As part of the third of those, the company revealed that its recycling program last year recovered 89 million pounds of materials – Business Insider noting that this included a cool $40M worth of gold.
Gold is commonly used in circuit boards because it has low electrical resistance and, unlike copper, doesn’t corrode. In most applications, a thin layer of gold covers a thicker layer of copper – which was a second valuable material recovered by Apple …
Apple has released its 2016 supplier responsibility progress report including a new letter from recently named COO Jeff Williams detailing Apple’s commitment to the people who create its products.
As part of Apple’s Renew program, where the company is encouraging people to recycle their old devices to help the environment, Apple has posted some exclusive environmental wallpaper to download on its website. The URL (apple.com/thanks) is given out on cards in Apple Stores to people who recycle their old device in store, as a small gesture of appreciation.
However, the URL is open to anyone to visit and download some cute, exclusive, iOS 9 wallpaper that isn’t included in the default list of iOS wallpaper …
Update: Galway Independent (via Business Insider) reports that a hearing date has now been set, for Tuesday 24th May. The venue has not yet been confirmed.
Apple’s plan to build one of the world’s largest data centers in Ireland hit a stumbling block earlier this month when local residents filed objections. The planning body, An Bord Pleanála, said that it would be pushing back its decision from February to May in order to consider those objections.
Business Insider reports that An Bord Pleanála has now written to Apple’s consulting engineers, asking them to address five concerns …
In this week’s episode of The Logic Pros, we will be taking a user-friendly look at Logic’s mysterious and powerful MIDI Environment. Along with what seems like a countless number of possibilities, tools, MIDI FX mods and more, the Environment has an interesting little item known as Touch Tracks that can do some pretty amazing things once it’s set up properly:
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