Apple saved almost a million metric tons of copper, tin and zinc ore in 2020 by removing chargers from iPhone boxes

Apple iCloud, Siri and iMessage now run on sustainable energy only.

Apple iPhone 12 Pro box. (Unsplash)

When Apple announced that it will be letting go of the charger and earpods from the retail box of its iPhone 12 series and the older models, many customers were not in favour of this as Android OEMs still bundle these accessories with handsets. Many even claimed that it is Apple's way of saving cost and going into more profits eventually. However, Apple's reason was to reduce the carbon footprint by manufacturing less plastic materials, which is a step ahead in making the company ‘Carbon Neutral' by the year 2030. Now, the last year's report is out and here are the numbers.

As per Apple's mini-site, which also has the latest ‘Environmental Progress Report' PDF file that was released a couple of days ago, the Cupertino-based company saved 861,000 metric tons of copper, tin, and zinc ore in just last year by removing power adapters from iPhone boxes.

It also talked about some of the cloud-based and AI services like iCloud, Siri and iMessage, all of which are now running completely on sustainable energy. On the hardware side of things, the switching from Intel chips to Apple M1 chip for Mac mini, reduced the energy consumption enough to bring down the overall carbon footprint by 34%. Also mentioned was that the iPhone-maker's wind turbines in Esbjerg, Denmark produced energy worth powering 20,000 homes each year. On the other hand, the renewable energy brought to Apple's supply chain helped avoid over 8 million metric tons of carbon emissions.

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Apple is not just taking the environment seriously when it comes to its hardware and software offerings, it is also trying to bring a change in how the employees act within the company's social and environmental values by modifying executive cash bonuses based on it. This was announced by the iPhone maker in January this year during its annual proxy filing.