I think you underestimate the number of people who do care and want to be environmentally friendly in some way.
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Apple Accused of Misleading Consumers With 'Carbon Neutral' Claims
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Those products become e-waste only if YOU the consumer choose to make them so by tossing them instead of recycling them as you should. So it’s up to YOU if that happens, not Apple who has a free recycling program. And there are electronic recycling centers all over the place. Every second Saturday of the month my home town of 20K people has an electronics and metal recycling truck parked downtown for us to bring our stuff to.
This is not the worst thing Apple does. Their #1 problem is that they make "throw-away" products that have only a few years of life and then are disposed of.
THey could cut their manufacturing footprint if their products were able to remain in service longer.
THey could cut their manufacturing footprint if their products were able to remain in service longer.
I wish you understood how stupid is what you just said, LOL. Like, RKF level of stupid.
It’s good they account on companies that use misleading tactics. I hope they’ll get fined.
I do! But maybe it’s more obvious in our country, which is one of the most heavily densed in the world.
It's a popular quote by Dick the Butcher on what they should do once they over throw the government and install a new ruling party.
"The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers."
Anyone who believes that stuff is delusional. People just get rich off this stuff, and the Apple Watch is the most un-repairable device there is, its e-waste when something goes wrong or warrantied devices are replaced rather than repaired.
My opinion only but I think that the term Carbon Neutral is itself misleading.
How about a company limit pollution rather than spending some money in carbon credits and declaring everything good.
How about a company limit pollution rather than spending some money in carbon credits and declaring everything good.
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This is standard procedure for a legal action. The plaintiffs must state a cause of action and show damages. You can't just sue and say "they lied" - you have to show how you were harmed. So, while you are correct that it's unlikely they would have avoided the purchase absent the carbon-neutral claim, that is really just a mechanism to show damages, and is necessary in any lawsuit.
I think it's laughable that anyone would believe Apple on this issue. It's 100% marketing to target people who just hear and believe - "OH CARBON NEUTRAL! OMG! ILL BUY THREE!" and dont do easy HW to see that they are full of it.
Apple still manufactures most of their products in other countries while espousing how great they are with zero carbon emissions in the US, but I'm not faulting their hypocrisy. I'm saying they are expert marketers and tend to lead the tech industry. I would rather have them lead by hypocritical example than by an indifferent or bad example. Lawsuits like these might seem frivolous but they add up and make a difference in the long term, especially during this administration when most regulations are being removed from companies to free up more greedy and destructive behavior.
Keyword in your sentence is “want”.
Everyone *wants* to reduce their carbon footprint.
Most people can’t just decide not to use a phone though, or decide not to use a computer, no matter the company.
Judge.. "Tim, stop saying carbon neutral. Plaintiffs, I award you one cent. Now go away with your silly and stupid lawsuit."
Seems a bit ridiculous to claim that if an Apple Watch Ultra 2 wasn’t being sold as carbon neutral, it would sell for less. That would only be able to be proven true if Apple were selling some other identical item(s) that have both carbon neutral and not carbon neutral options where the carbon neutral version cost more.
How about we start a class action lawsuit against these people in the lawsuit against Apple, because they’re having a negative effect on our lives having had to read their claims of harm due to purported carbon neutral product pricing?
How about we start a class action lawsuit against these people in the lawsuit against Apple, because they’re having a negative effect on our lives having had to read their claims of harm due to purported carbon neutral product pricing?
Yet here Apple are making utterly cringey, stupid skits about it as part of their keynote.
The worst thing Apple does is not allow owners to work on, repair, upgrade their own machines with commodity parts. The level of waste that generates is enormous, but hey, everything for a buck. Right, Apple?
If you want to decrease your carbon footprint for technology gadgets your only real option is to stop buying them.
More total bollocks from greedy lawyers trolling for a payday - like most of these frivolous class actions, user if there's a win gets $10 and only if they bought the watch on a tuesday morning - The Lawyers get $10 million regardless. These class action suits should be dismissed out of hand.
Apple is facing a new lawsuit from consumers who allege that its claim that the Apple Watch Series 9, SE, and Ultra 2 are "carbon neutral" is misleading, Reuters reports.
Filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, the lawsuit argues that Apple misrepresented the environmental impact of these three Apple Watch models by relying on carbon offset projects that did not provide genuine carbon reductions. The plaintiffs claim they would not have bought their devices or would have paid less had they known this.
The complaint centers on two carbon offset projects Apple uses to support its carbon neutrality efforts: Kenya's Chyulu Hills Project and China's Guinan Project. According to the lawsuit, both projects fail to meet the criteria for additional carbon reduction because the land in question was already protected or heavily forested before Apple's involvement.
The plaintiffs argue that because these locations were already managed under conservation protections for several decades or naturally heavily forested, Apple's financial support did not lead to a reduction in carbon emissions beyond what would have occurred naturally.
Apple introduced the first carbon-neutral Apple Watch models in September 2023 as part of its broader environmental initiatives. The marketing materials and packaging included a new green "carbon neutral" label. The company has set a goal of making its entire business carbon neutral by 2030.
The plaintiffs cite a study by the National Retail Federation and IBM, stating that 70% of U.S. and Canadian consumers consider environmental sustainability an important factor in purchasing decisions. Unspecified damages and an injunction to prevent Apple from marketing the Apple Watch Series 9, SE, and Ultra 2 as carbon neutral are being sought.
Article Link: Apple Accused of Misleading Consumers With 'Carbon Neutral' Claims
I had my Apple Watch 4 almost since the day it was released in September 2018 until about 3 weeks ago. That's 6.5 years. I elected to swap it for recycling because I still have a Watch 6 and I was buying an Ultra 2. I was swapping back and forth between the 4 and the 6 for years, and the 4's battery was starting to last only about 12 hours.
I'm not so sure I've had any REGULAR watch last that long.
He has doubts that carbon neutral is really a thing. Kind of like having vaccines that didn't prevent the thing they were SUPPOSED to prevent.
Oh, and if you're going to criticize somebody for having any "level of stupid", you should make an effort to get spelling and detail correct. It's "RFK Jr." who is our secretary of Health and Human Services. Not "RKF"; that would be a different person entirely.
Henry VI, part II. Thank you for the background. I've read Hamlet and The Tempest, so I didn't get that reference. I learn something new every day, it seems!
Un-repairable, yes. But my Watch 4 lasted 6.5 years. So that's not too shabby, especially since pretty much no "regular" watch will last me for much longer than the factory battery anyhow.
We don't even need to force companies to LIMIT pollution. Just have them PUBLISH the oil used, electricity used, and types+amount of pollution emitted to make your new device. Kind of like how almost every food needs to tell you the calories of fat and sugar, plus the sodium, color dyes, ingredients, and other things in that food.
Publish it. If the people care about pollution or natural resources/rare-earth metals used, then they will make their decisions accordingly. If they don't care, then that too will become obvious over time.
Yes and no.
Yes, you can reduce your own personal DIRECT carbon usage by not buying things. But SOCIETY will still use natural resources and expel carbon in its support for you as a member of that society.
For example: You don't own a watch, phone, or even a car. You take the bus everywhere. Let's say the bus is electric and runs off of free Flatulent Unicorn Gas. Unicorns fart; it's a fact of unicorn life. So we bottled that and burn it in your morning and afternoon bus.
Well, the bus still had to be manufactured. It might have costed 2-4 barrels of oil to make your bus, plus some hours of electricity. And then there's the delivery costs to get that bus from its factory in Bowling Green, OH (or wherever it is that they make Unicorn busses) to the paint factory where they painted it with all the unicorn imagery...and then to ship that bus to your city.
And now that the bus in in service, diligently making its unicorn rounds every day for you and your neighbors, the REST of the road system still needs to operate correctly for that unicorn bus to get to you in the morning and to pick you up from work in the afternoon.
Roads are made of oil (basically), traffic lights need electricity and microprocessors. Early-morning bus routes require the street lights to work. More electricity and microprocessors, and maybe even a special chip called a photocell to tell that street light to stay off while the sun is up. And all that wiring they put in the road beds, or the WIFI cameras they're using to manage the traffic signals.
My point is that NOTHING, not your Apple Watch nor the street light in front of your house, is a thing all by itself. Everything is part of a bigger SYSTEM.
You can reduce your own carbon footprint, but only by a certain amount, after which, you have reached a minimum baseline. Even the Amish still generate a minimum baseline, just because they too are humans, and sometimes their horse-drawn carriages slow down traffic.
And don't get me started on the carbon footprint of a horse and carriage; your rickety old Toyota might be less pollutive!