The greening of Apple

Just in time for Earth Day, Apple has released a glossy video and an Environmental Responsibility Report, its second.

The video (see below) hits all the right notes, and will burnish Apple’s image — endorsed now by Greenpeace — as a green company. “We think about power, and how to power that power,” says the narrator, former EPA administrator Lisa Jackson, now Apple’s VP for environmental issues, “because our ecosystem is part of a larger one.”

The 36-page report is a tougher slog. Because in addition to hitting the right notes, it has to dance around the fact that Apple’s carbon footprint — 34.2 million metric tons of greenhouse gas emitted, 4.5 million gallons of water withdrawn — is getting bigger, not smaller.

“It takes an enormous amount of energy to design, assemble, and ship hundreds of millions of products all over the world,” the report acknowledges high up. It does not mention that Apple’s long term success rides on its ability to sell, year after year, even more hundreds of millions of products.

The good news is that Apple’s carbon efficiency — the ratio of carbon emissions to revenue generated — is improving (see chart). It’s on the strength of that improvement — and the promise to do more — that Apple won over Greenpeace.

The bad news is that there’s a limit to what Apple can do about the bulk of the remaining emissions.