Consumers sue Apple over carbon-neutral watch claim

US consumers are suing Apple for allegedly misleading them by claiming some of its Apple Watch models are carbon neutral.

In a class action lawsuit filed in California this week, seven plaintiffs claim that Apple’s carbon neutrality claims are false because they are related to the purchase of carbon credits from projects in Kenya and China that both “fail to provide genuine, additional carbon reductions”.

The watch buyers add that they would not have purchased the products – at a price premium – if they had known that Apple’s environmental claims were not backed by robust projects.

“As a result of Apple’s misleading claims, consumers have suffered economic injury in multiple ways: they paid a price premium based in part on false environmental claims; the deceptive marketing distorted the marketplace by falsely differentiating Apple’s products on environmental grounds; and, consumers did not receive the benefit of their bargain—they paid for watches marketed as environmentally superior but received products whose environmental claims rely on ineffective and redundant offset projects that fail to provide genuine carbon reductions,” the case filing states, requesting compensation for the harmed consumers.

Criticism of Apple’s ‘carbon-neutral’ watches 

Apple began marketing a new range of smart watches as carbon neutral in September 2023 – around the time of its ‘Mother Nature’ ad, where actor Octavia Spencer played the role of Mother Nature coming to Apple’s board meeting to hear about its environmental progress, and left pleasantly surprised.

Already at the time, sustainability experts criticised the claim. For example, NewClimate Institute’s Thomas Day and Reena Skribbe wrote: “Apple’s carbon neutrality claims create an unnecessarily misleading exaggeration of the company’s ambition. Without the misleading marketing, Apple could stand out as a role model for several aspects of its climate plan, but there remain also significant areas of potential improvement.”

Concerns were compounded by the fact that Apple’s carbon reduction to offsets ratio leans more towards carbon credits than some of its competitors: the firm only plans to reduce 75% of its emissions, while offsetting the remaining 25%. This is not in line with the recommendations of the Science Based Targets Initiative, which recommends 90% reductions and 10% offsetting.

Carbon offsetting claims and climate litigation

Making carbon neutrality claims based on carbon offsets is considered to border on greenwashing – and is even set to be banned in the European Union. This is because it has historically been very difficult to ensure that carbon credits – most of which are purchased at a cheap price far away from where a company operates – actually bring carbon benefits.

Efforts to make the voluntary carbon market more transparent are underway: on the supply side, the Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market (ICVCM) has launched a high-quality label for carbon credit projects, and on the demand side, the Voluntary Carbon Market Integrity Initiative (VCMI) has developed a framework to guide how companies should make credible claims.

But the case against Apple reflects growing climate litigation risks: in a December 2023 interview with CSO Futures, Michelle Davies, Global Head of Sustainability at EY Law, called this type of lawsuit ‘real economy climate litigation’. 

“The regulation is becoming more nuanced and more focused, honing in on what organisations really have to do and where they really are. So you've got that and that also a change in climate psychology amongst key stakeholders, so the train has left the station: people are now making decisions and pricing their terms of engagement based on climate risk,” she said.