Group Sues Apple Over Use of REDD+, ARR Credits in Carbon Neutral Marketing
Apple misled consumers and engaged in greenwashing when it promoted its 2023 watch lineup as carbon neutral, plaintiffs alleged in a class-action suit filed in US District Court Wednesday.
The California tech company described its 2023 watches as “its first-ever carbon neutral products” in a September news release that year. Apple had reduced value chain emissions for the watches by over 75%, it said. “The company will use high-quality carbon credits to address the small amount of remaining emissions, resulting in a carbon neutral product footprint,” Apple said at the time.
The seven plaintiffs named in the lawsuit, filed in the US District Court for the Northern District of California this week, allege that Apple’s carbon neutral claims were “false and misleading” because the projects from which Apple retired carbon credits to account for the products’ remaining emissions “fail to provide genuine, additional carbon reductions,” the complaint reads.
The plaintiffs “suffered economic injury because Apple’s false ‘carbon neutral’ claims deprived them of the ability to make informed purchasing decisions in the smartwatch market,” according to the complaint.
They are, therefore, seeking damages related to purchasing the watches on false pretenses, Fletch Trammell, one of the attorneys bringing the case, told OPIS.
“We have to prove, when we get in front of a jury, that there is a definition of what carbon neutrality means,” Trammell said. “Apple claimed that it met that definition using certain components that actually quantified the amount of carbon offset. We can demonstrate that those carbon offsets are completely bogus. There was no carbon neutrality, which makes that claim untrue.”
According to the complaint, Apple retired credits from the Chyulu Hills REDD+ project in Kenya and the Guinan ARR Project in China to address the remaining emissions from its 2023 watch lineup.
REDD+ stands for reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation, while ARR stands for afforestation, reforestation and revegetation.
Citing satellite imagery, plaintiffs allege that the majority of Chyulu Hill’s protected forest carbon stocks lie within the Chyulu Hills National Park, which has been protected land since 1983. They also argue that 78% of Guinan was “already covered by trees” before the project’s crediting period began.
As such, “the two primary projects from which Apple purchases its carbon credits … fail to provide genuine carbon reductions,” according to the lawsuit.
In its 2024 Environmental Progress Report, the latest available, Apple said it retired 230,000 vintage 2018 credits from Chyulu Hills and 255,000 V19-V21 credits from Guinan “toward our corporate emissions footprint for 2023” but did not specify if any of the credits were specifically designated for its watch products’ carbon neutrality.
The company was named as the beneficiary of over 1.5 million credits retired since 2021 from six different projects, Verra records show. The company was not designated as the retiree of any credits on the Gold Standard, ACR or Climate Action Reserve registries.
Apple did not respond to a request for comment.
Nine other false and misleading advertising cases have been brought against companies in the US in the past, including Delta Airlines, its partner KLM Royal Dutch Airlines, JBS USA Food Co., Etsy, Danone Waters of America, Eversource Energy, Tyson Foods and Northwest Natural Gas Co., according to the Global Climate Change Litigation Database.
These lawsuits have significantly dampened demand for carbon credits, sources have told OPIS. But their plaintiffs have yet to establish a successful track record in court.
KLM had two greenwashing cases dismissed. In one, the plaintiff’s attorney was found to have knowingly brought his client’s claims on false pretenses and was sanctioned by the US District Court of the Southern District of New York.
The cases against JBS and Danone were dismissed, but both judges allowed the plaintiffs to bring amended complaints. The case against Etsy was voluntarily dismissed by the plaintiffs. The cases against Delta, Eversource and Northwest Natural Gas are still in progress.
At the same time, the practice of advertising products as carbon neutral has received significant criticism.
The European Union decided to ban carbon neutral claims on products following negotiations that concluded just over a week after Apple’s Watch announcement in September 2023. The bloc’s Empowering Consumers for the Green Transition Directive will take effect in 2026.
“There is no such thing as ‘carbon neutral’ … cheese, plastic bottles, flights or bank accounts,” European Consumer Organization Deputy Director General Ursula Pachl said in a statement at the time.
Besides sourcing credits from the voluntary market, Apple has dedicated significant investments to developing carbon projects.
The Cupertino, Calif.-headquartered corporation announced a $200 million initiative to fund forest removal projects in partnership with Goldman Sachs and Conservation International – one of the developers of Chyulu Hills – in 2021. The company aimed to use the fund to remove at least 1 million metric tons of carbon per year.
Apple expanded the effort in 2023 with an additional $200 million commitment and a goal of removing an additional 1 million mt of emissions that has been overseen by Climate Asset Management. Apple suppliers TSMC and Murata Manufacturing joined the Restore Fund with contributions of $50 million and $30 million, respectively, in 2024.
Apple maintains a broader corporate goal of reducing value chain emissions by 75% by 2030 and achieving carbon neutrality by offsetting the remainder with carbon credits.
Reporting by Henry Kronk, hkronk@opisnet.com
Editing by Jeremy Rakes, jrakes@opisnet.com
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