Apple announced an ambitious plan to expand the use of recycled materials across its products, which would require suppliers to achieve certain environmental benchmarks to secure orders from the world's largest company by market capitalization.
According to Apple's press release, the company said by 2025 it will use 100% certified recycled cobalt in all Apple-designed batteries, 100% certified recycled rare earth elements in magnets across its devices, 100% certified gold and tin soldering in PCBs, and eliminate all plastics from the company's packaging.
Apple said the share of its use of 100% certified recycled cobalt in Apple-designed batteries has risen from 13% in 2021 to 25% in 2022. The share of 100% certified rare earth elements used in magnets in Apple products went from 45% in 2021 to 73% in 2022. Apple further said 38% of all tin used in Apple products was from recycled sources in 2022, adding that Apple has to address the remaining 4% of plastic used in packaging before eliminating all plastics in its packaging by 2025.
Apple aims to reach carbon neutrality for all products by 2030. According to its website, Apple is trying to reach the 2030 goal through low-carbon design, improving energy efficiency across retail stores, data centers, offices, and manufacturing sites, using renewable electricity, avoiding direct emissions, and carbon removal. Apple announced a major Restore Fund expansion on April 11 to advance high-quality nature-based carbon removal projects.
Given the huge sales volume of Apple products and its extensive and complex supply chain, Apple's effort to achieve environmental goals will further raise the bar for suppliers to enter into Apple's supply chain.
After participating in the RE100 initiative in 2016, in 2019, Apple announced a doubled number of suppliers using only clean energy for production work, including TSMC and Foxconn.
