Four years ago,
Apple announced that it was going to make all of its facilities run entirely on renewable energy.
In an exclusive, Apple told VICE News that it’s 96% of the way toward that goal.
And now, it’s setting another industry-changing objective:
making all of its products from recycled or renewable resources.
— Before she was Apple’s VP of Environmental, Policy, and Social Initiatives,
Lisa Jackson served as EPA Administrator under President Obama.
And before that, she trained as a chemical engineer.
— Do you ever miss the lab?
— I miss research.
I think, as you get older,
you realize, like, it would’ve been cool to just stay around the lab for a lot longer time, right?
But what’s really nice about this lab is
it’s sort-of where Apple and the environment meet the customer.
— Or meet what the customer does to their products?
— Yeah, exactly.
— At the Apple Environmental Testing Lab,
a team of chemists and toxicologists use unusual methods
to gauge the impact of their products on users and the environment they live in.
A laser, similar to the one used on the Mars rover, vaporizes elements to test for safety.
Apple Watch bands and AirPods are stress-tested in beakers of synthetic human sweat.
A technician at the lab makes half-a-gallon of the stuff each day.
— How does this lab fall into your announcement
about safety, renewables, and being more environmentally friendly?
— Part of what we’re trying to do, especially this year, is start to close the loop,
to use more recycled materials, to mine less from the Earth, we say.
And, in order to do that, you have to have a really tight handle
on what’s in the products, and the materials that you’re using.
— But Apple’s plan on how to exactly close that loop is, admittedly, a work in progress.
— To do that, to 100% use renewable resources, and recycled metals, and minerals,
that sounds... nearly impossible?
What's the timeline for this, and how are you going to make that happen?
— So, we're not going to announce a timeline.
We're actually doing something we rarely do,
which is announce a goal before we've completely figured out how to do it.
I think, people are used to Apple announcing something and then, tomorrow, we’re all there.
So we're a little nervous, but we also think it’s really important,
because, as a sector, we believe it's where technology should be going.
— Their renewable energy goal didn’t have a timeline either,
but they’ve nearly met it over four years.
This, however—this is gonna be harder.
Not only does Apple have to put out the same quality product using recycled materials,
but they’ll have to figure out how to take apart and melt down old phones.
Enter Apple’s twin iPhone-disassembling robots, Liam.
— Liam works on iPhone 6S, and can do about 2.4-million phones a year.
— And takes it apart component by component.
— Yeah, when you're done, you see a pile of cameras,
a pile of vibrator motors, a pile of enclosures.
And so, they can then say, “Okay, now that I know what you're giving me,”
“and I have certainty around that, let me go and do my thing,”
which is, you know, separate the material even further and, hopefully, get it back into the chain.
— What effect will having a company like Apple
basically turn away from mining have on the mining industry?
— You know, I think it's not going to happen quickly.
So, it's a transition.
Part of the reason I'm talking about it now
is so people can start to think about the opportunities for them in this business.
Who knows more about recovering metals than people who mine them?
And those will probably be some of the folks we’ll end up working with.
— This is a tenuous time for the agency Jackson once lead.
But that doesn’t seem to affect where she thinks the world is headed.
— You know, I'm from New Orleans, so we love a parade.
And I feel like—you know, there’s a parade happening.
We're a part of it, and I don’t think that that parade’s gonna stop because
we here in the U.S. are maybe moving to the back of the line.
— Do you think the Trump administration is fighting against the flow of that parade?
— You know, I worked over two decades at EPA.
Really smart people, really dedicated public servants,
who recognize that it's always been technology
that gives us economic growth and a cleaner environment.
And I know, for us at Apple, we're looking for clean energy
and there’s a lot of companies that are moving in that direction as well.
I don’t think they’re gonna move back.