Conclusion

At the beginning of the semester, we decided that our research hypothesis was whether Apple’s sustainability practices contributed to the company’s success including innovation and profitability. After analyzing Apple’s sustainable practices and strategies we can state that in the case of Apple, sustainability is a driver for innovation. If the company is known for something is for always implementing the most innovative technology in its products. For example, the company now uses sustainable technology such as the ELYSIS program that creates more environmentally friendly products that were designed in accordance with their life-cycle assessment. Furthermore, Apple’s revenue has increased in the past few years due to the innovative products the company keeps creating every year. Nevertheless, we believe that the company is not as sustainable as it appears to be and that Apple mainly uses greenwashing toward its stakeholders. Some of the reasons behind that are Apple’s issues with its supply chain, its end-of-life product design, and Apple’s misleading sustainability reports.

First, the company has had critical issues with its supply chain, and it seems not able to control those problems even now. Apple has been linked to supply chain companies that use child labor or forced labor of minority groups in Asia and although the company has implemented some suppliers programs to assist their manufacturers to implement better working conditions for their employees, the truth is that Apple has a silo mentality when it comes to its supply chain and does not seem to really care for those employees as long as Apple is still able to maintain its reputability.

Second, the company contributes to consumerism by creating new products every year and by not designing refurbishing techniques for its old products. Creating new products more often rather than allowing customers to upgrade or re-use their already owned Apple products is more profitable for the company, for this same reason, Apple does not invest at the end of product life opportunities which generates a lot of waste. For example, in 2018 Apple sent 36.5 million tons of waste to landfills. Moreover, this number keeps increasing every year.

Finally, Apple's ESG report is simply a tool to gain reputability for the company as Apple uses its ESG report to share only information that can be beneficial for the company. Furthermore, the report does not provide accurate data as it only reflects estimates and forward-looking statements. Shadow reporting has demonstrated that those numbers as misleading. For example, in its ESG report, Apple states that the company uses 100% renewable energy in its data centers; nevertheless, it has been proved that only 17% of Apple data centers use renewable energy.

Hence, after analyzing Apple’s sustainability practices and strategies we have concluded that the company only cares about profitability and although Apple has implemented some sustainable practices, it is true that the company only does it if at the end of the day those practices will increase Apple’s revenue and reputability. The company does that by creating sustainable goals that do not align with its ESG material issues like its supply chain.