Apple Environmental Responsibility Report

Our new corporate campus, Apple Park, is on track to be the largest LEED
Platinum–certified building in North America. Over 80 percent of the new
campus is open space with more than 9000 drought-tolerant trees. And,
of course, it’s powered by 100 percent renewable energy.
We’re pushing our manufacturing partners to join us in the fight against
climate change. Seven major suppliers have now pledged to power their
Apple production entirely with renewable energy by the end of next year.
And we’re making strides toward our commitment to bring 4 gigawatts of
renewable power online by 2020, a key step in reducing our manufacturing
footprint. We launched our supplier clean energy program in October 2015.
But between our own clean energy projects to target emissions from upstream
suppliers and those our direct suppliers have embarked on, we already
have commitments for 2 gigawatts of clean energy in our supply chain.
To preserve precious resources, over 99 percent of the paper in our
product packaging is from recycled or responsibly managed sources.
And, in only two years, through partnerships with the Conservation
Fund and World Wildlife Fund, we have achieved our goal of protecting
or creating enough sustainably managed working forests to cover all of
our product packaging needs.
That’s just a start. We’re going deeper to pioneer a closed-loop supply
chain, where products are made using only renewable resources or
recycled material to reduce the need to mine materials from the earth.
That means continuing to invest in ways to recover materials from our
products—like Liam, our line of disassembly robots—and encouraging
our customers to return products through Apple Renew, our recycling
program. And we’re launching projects and experiments that help us learn
how to close loops. For example, we’ve melted down iPhone 6 aluminum
enclosures recovered from Liam to make Mac mini computers for use in
our factories, and we’re transitioning to 100 percent recycled tin solder
on the main logic board of iPhone 6s.
We’re also continuing our quest to make our products and processes
even safer by pioneering ways to reduce and remove toxins. We again
expanded our Environmental Testing Lab, where our chemists and
toxicologists look for any potentially harmful substances in our products.
And, through our Full Material Disclosure program, we’ve identified all the
substances present in more than 20,000 individual components—up from
10,000 a year ago—so we can understand their effect on people’s health
and the environment.
It’s clear to us that now, more than ever, we can show the way to a better
future. We’re constantly working to show what’s possible and inspire others
to create a healthier environment.
We’re devoted to improvement and openness, and we encourage you to
join us in working to leave the world better than we found it.
Environmental Responsibility Report | 2017 Progress Report, Covering FY2016
4