Apple’s green credentials

Apple made a point at its product launches this autumn to emphasise its green credentials. But how green is Apple really? I just treated myself to a new Apple iPad Air (not least to write my blog posts) from my local electronics store in Switzerland, and since the Apple Pencil was cheaper from Apple’s Swiss website directly, I decided to order it from them instead.

As is now customary when you buy something online, you get half a dozen emails and text messages congratulating you on your purchase and wishing you plenty of enjoyment with your new toy, and just in case you can’t wait to receive your item and want to know where it is at every stage of its journey, you get a link as well, which enables you to track your parcel. You can imagine my surprise when I noticed that the pencil which I had ordered on Apple’s Swiss website was being shipped from Milan (northern Italy), flown to the parcel carrier’s hub in Leipzig (in Northern Germany) just to be put there on another plane to Basel from where it was transported by lorry to the regional distribution centre from where it was finally delivered by van to my door. A journey of not less than a mind-boggling 1700 km. And just in case you wonder, Zug is actually just short of 200 km from Milan (admittedly, there is a border in between the two as well).

I am obviously fully aware that distribution networks and supply chains don’t always work in the shortest ways, and I appreciate the value of hub and spoke systems, but a journey for my small parcel of eight times the direct distance between two cities seems nevertheless over the top. Apple states on its website that it is carbon neutral and that by 2030 all its product will be too. So I presume Apple is (or will be) offsetting the transportation of its devices to the customer as well.

Not only has my pencil in just 20 hours travelled farther than I have in all of the last six months, but offsetting the carbon dioxide emitted on its journey across Europe probably explains at least in part it’s still comparatively exorbitant cost.