A history of progress.
For more than 20 years, Apple has been working on ways to minimize the impact our company and our products have on the environment. We developed and formulated our first environmental policy in 1990, and every year since then, we’ve continued to make our products more energy efficient, eliminated many toxic substances, and embraced renewable energy in our facilities. In 2009, we became the first company in our industry to report comprehensive calculations of our total carbon footprint — including environmental reports for every product — giving the public an opportunity to judge our efforts and track our progress in detail.
Apple’s revised carbon footprint estimate for 2008.
In 2009, Apple took the unprecedented step of reporting our entire carbon footprint. We announced the total weight of greenhouse gases emitted during the manufacturing, delivery, use, and recycling of our products, as well as the operation of our facilities worldwide. It was a huge step for environmental reporting, especially in our industry.
To arrive at this total, we used an industry-leading Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) tool — a sophisticated model that measures the environmental impact of each of our products, based on data from the supply chain to measure the manufacturing phase and from product power consumption to measure the use phase. Our LCA also takes into account where Apple products are sold and used, since electrical grids that power your Mac or charge your iPhone can use different power sources and produce different amounts of greenhouse gas emissions.
For 2008, we reported that Apple’s carbon footprint was equivalent to 10.2 million metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions. In the year since we first announced this total, we have continued to refine our LCA model to make it more accurate. For example, we found that some of our products are more efficient over the long term. We also began using a new, more reliable industry standard for calculating emissions generated by product use.
As a result of these changes in our LCA model, we have determined that Apple’s carbon footprint for 2008 was actually 9.4 million metric tons of CO2e — 8 percent less, or 723,000 metric tons, than we initially reported. This adjustment has been audited and verified by the Fraunhofer Institute in Germany.
Below are some of the noteworthy adjustments to the calculation of Apple’s carbon footprint in 2008:
Manufacturing: The calculation for the innovative manufacturing processes used to build the revolutionary aluminum unibody design in MacBook Pro and MacBook Air became more accurate over the course of 2009, reducing manufacturing emissions by 9 percent.
Transportation: Distributing our products around the world required more long-haul destinations than initially estimated, increasing transportation-related emissions by 58,000 metric tons of CO2e.
Use: We adopted a new method for modeling how customers use their computers. The new method was based on a draft industry standard, EecoMark, that was not available when our original FY2008 footprint was calculated. Applying the new user model resulted in a 7 percent reduction in calculated emissions for the use phase.
Facilities: Apple employees’ use of clean-fuel commuting alternatives reduced emissions by 24,000 metric tons of CO2e.
For a more detailed description of the assumptions used during our application of the LCA process, read our FAQ.
More growth with minimal impact.
From FY2008 to FY2009, Apple’s revenue grew 12 percent and the number of products we shipped grew 11 percent, but our carbon footprint grew only 2 percent. We have been successful in controlling our impact on the environment by developing more efficient designs, creating smaller packaging, increasing the energy efficiency of our products, furthering our recycling efforts, and reducing energy use in our facilities.
