- Apple has been hit with a class action lawsuit
- The dispute is over the company’s claims that its Apple Watch Ultra 2, SE 2, and Series 9 are carbon neutral
- Plaintiffs say these claims are “false and misleading”
Apple has been hit with a class action lawsuit over claims that many of its best Apple Watch models are carbon neutral, which plaintiffs say are “false and misleading.”
The suit, filed in the Northern District of California on February 26, seeks to represent “all persons in the United States” who bought the Apple Watch Series 9, Apple Watch SE 2, and Apple Watch Ultra 2.
These are all models that Apple advertises as “carbon neutral”, a designation introduced in September 2023 with the arrival of the Series 9 and Ultra 2, and one that was added to the SE 2 launched the year before.
The suit notes Apple’s strategy of reducing the overall carbon emissions of these products by 75%, and offsetting the remainder through “high-quality carbon credits from nature-based projects.”
The two projects named are the source of the dispute. From the suit: ” Apple claims to have retired 485,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalents primarily through two offsetting projects: the Chyulu Hills Project in Kenya and the Guinan Project in China.” According to the plaintiffs, Apple’s carbon neutrality claims are “false and misleading.”
“The Chyulu Hills Project purports to generate carbon credits by preventing deforestation on land which has been legally protected from deforestation since 1983,” the suit reads, “while the Guinan Project claims to have planted trees on ‘barren land’ that was already heavily forested before the project began.”
The lawsuit says that in both cases “the carbon reductions would have occurred regardless of Apple’s involvement or the projects’ existence,” and as such Apple’s carbon neutrality claims, which are “predicated on the efficacy and legitimacy of these projects,” are false and misleading.
The suit goes on to claim that consumers have suffered economic injury and would not have bought the products, or paid as much for them, if they had known “that Apple’s ‘carbon neutral’ representations were false.”
Apple hits back
“We are proud of our carbon neutral products, which are the result of industry-leading innovation in clean energy and low-carbon design,” Apple told TechRadar in a defiant statement. “We’ve drastically cut emissions for Apple Watch by over 75 percent, and we are investing significantly in nature-based projects to remove hundreds of thousands of metric tons of carbon from the air. That innovation and progress is important to us and to the planet, which is why we detail our work prominently and transparently for our users.”
Apple, as is to be expected, did not address the specific claims about the efficacy and legitimacy of the two named projects in the lawsuit, a discussion that will play out in court should the case come to fruition and end up going to trial.
As we’ve previously noted, there’s plenty of public information about the questions around carbon credit programs. A report from The Guardian has previously suggested that some such programs are “worthless.” Similarly, the New Climate Institute claimed that “Carbon credits cannot be considered an equivalent alternative to the reduction of companies’ own emissions,” dubbing the practice “highly contentious.” The NCI claims “the use of certificates from such projects is simply not a feasible solution for truly neutralising emissions,” noting that carbon storage in forestry and land-use projects “is likely to only be temporary” because of forest fires and other disturbances.
The lawsuit lays bare the main issue with Apple’s carbon neutrality claims. Any product that requires manufacture and distribution will have a carbon footprint that is impossible to eliminate totally, so any ‘carbon neutral’ push will inevitably have to rely on offsetting. As such, the efficacy and integrity of those programs will always underpin whether using a carbon neutral claim is justified.
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