Apple (AAPL.O) does not charge more to account for its efforts to reduce the carbon footprint of its widely used consumer technology products, its top sustainability executive said on Wednesday at the NEXT conference in New York.
“We don’t put a premium on the work we’re doing,” Apple vice president Lisa Jackson said in an interview with editor-in-chief Alessandra Galloni.
Apple, with a market capitalisation of about $2.8 trillion, making it the world’s most valuable publicly traded company, wants to show a way forward that can be applied to other companies, Jackson said. Apple CEO Tim Cook has set the tone, Jackson said.
“I want to do it in a way that other companies can say it’s not because they’re Apple,” Jackson said, referring to Cook’s direction. “It’s because they understand how to use clean energy and (recyclable) materials in their manufacturing chains and reduce emissions.”
Apple has been aggressive among large US companies in lobbying for tougher state environmental policies. In September it backed legislation in California requiring companies to report their greenhouse gas emissions, despite opposition from business groups in the state.
Under Jackson, the former head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Apple was also an early supporter of federal rules requiring companies to disclose emissions from their value chains.
Many other executives at major US companies oppose the idea, which has yet to be finalised by securities regulators. Critics say it would be easier for a technology company like Apple to meet such targets than for companies in more energy-intensive industries.
In her remarks on Wednesday, Jackson nodded to the challenges of tracking and reporting supply chain details. “Even making the windmills to generate renewable energy has a carbon footprint, so you have to account for that,” she said.
For a recent model of the Apple Watch, the company reduced its carbon footprint by 78%, but not by about 8 kilograms of emissions for each device. “We just don’t have the ability right now to take care of that,” which includes the environmental impact of transportation and logistics.
Jackson also said that Apple is working with smaller processing companies to recycle rare earths and other materials. “That’s where Apple can invest and then help scale and bring (other) companies along,” she said.
