Apple's Carbon Neutrality Progress Report

Background

The emission of toxic gases into the environment undoubtedly has a negative impact on human health. Industrial activities from companies worldwide are among the leading forces behind the increased emission of toxic gases into the atmosphere.

In 2020, Apple, a leading tech company, resolved to make the environment more friendly by reducing the amount of greenhouse gas emitted from its industrial processes and products. The goal is to reduce the emission of GHG (Greenhouse Gases) from its product lifecycle by 75% by 2030, using its total emission in 2015 as the baseline value. The remaining 25% GHG emissions will be removed via carbon offsets.

This project aims to assess the progress made and identify patterns that could enhance efficiency in the journey towards achieving carbon neutrality by Apple.

About The Data

Tables containing details on gas emissions by year, product lifecycle and corporate emissions and product's carbon footprint were collected and analyzed. The details contained in the dataset were enough to help achieve the goal of this project.

Tool: Microsoft Power BI was used for the entire analytical process.

Data Cleaning and Transformation

This step was carried out in Microsoft's Power Query editor. Some issues with the dataset include the presence of null values, inconsistent column naming conventions, values requiring conversions, and incorrect data types. There were no duplicates or outliers detected.

The data was cleaned and transfromed before proceeding to the next step.

Data Model

Relationships were carefully established among all four tables to ensure accurate analysis and seamless coordination of data. This structured connection enhances the reliability and depth of insights drawn from the details contained within the tables.

Measures were created to extract values that were originally not contained in the data.

Progress Report

As at 2022, the overall emission of GHG from Apple's product lifecycle had dropped to 20.28M metric tons from 38.38M metric tons in 2015 (decreased by 47.17%).

Apple's most recent products, iPhone 14 and iPhone 15 both have carbon footprints 61 and 56 respectively. This values are lower than the average carbon footprints (64) for the last 10 products released by the company.

The emissions from corporate activities currently stand at 0. This was achieved a while ago.

There has been a steady drop in the emissions released yearly since 2015 with the peak drop taking place between 2015 and 2016 (dropped by 22.96%). On average, the emissions dropped by 9.94% yearly.

In terms of scope, Scope 3 has the most impact on product lifecycle emissions. Activities under Scope 3 include raw material extraction, transportation of goods, product use, and end-of-life disposal. These factors significantly contribute to overall emissions.

75% of the overall emissions was as a direct result of the manufacturing process(purchased goods and services), followed by product use which accounted for 18.77% and product transportation (upstream and downstream) accounting for 5.68%. End-of-life processing leads to barely 0.56% of the overall emissions.

Conclusion

Without a doubt, Apple has made remarkable progress towards contributing to a carbon-free environment. If the efforts being put in at this stage does not wither, the target will be met considering the average percentage drop in emissions since 2015. However, the manufacturing process should be given much focus to speed up the process of reaching the set target.