A group of Apple Watch buyers has filed a lawsuit in Silicon Valley, accusing the tech giant of exaggerating the environmental friendliness of its smartwatch production. The civil suit, filed on February 26, argues that two nature-based projects Apple cites to support its carbon neutrality claims are areas where trees would be growing regardless of the company’s involvement.
The lawsuit contends that “Apple’s carbon neutrality claims are false and misleading because both projects fail to provide genuine, additional carbon reductions.” Apple, however, rejects these claims, stating on February 27 that the company had “drastically cut emissions for Apple Watch by over 75 percent” and is investing significantly in nature-based projects to remove hundreds of thousands of metric tons of carbon from the air.
According to the suit, Apple claims to have retired 485,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalents, primarily through the Chyulu Hills project in Kenya and the Guinan project in China. The Chyulu Hills project aims to generate carbon credits by preventing deforestation, but the suit maintains that the land has been legally protected from deforestation since 1983. Similarly, the Guinan project claims to have planted trees on barren land, but the area was already heavily forested before the project began.
The plaintiffs are seeking class-action status to represent all buyers of the Apple Watch Series 9, Apple Watch Ultra 2, or the second-generation Apple Watch SE. The complaint argues that “companies engage in greenwashing to capitalize on growing environmental consciousness while avoiding the costs and challenges of achieving genuine sustainability.” It further states that “carbon neutrality claims based on offsetting are particularly susceptible to greenwashing when companies rely on ineffective or redundant offset projects that fail to deliver genuine environmental benefits.”