TL:DR: they don‘t accept offsetting carbon emissions. By that logic, one watch has emitted between 7 and 12kg of CO2.
Note from my side: driving a combustion engine car emits between 100-200g per CO2 per km. So driving 70km in your car, will equal one Apple Watch.
So it is still quite impressive how low the value for the Apple Watch is, but it is not neutral.
It’s also impressively irreparable.
Shrug
I’m confused on what the EU is going for here. When I read “carbon neutral” I assume that means minimized emissions + carbon offsets.
I’m not sure if “zero carbon” is even a thing but it sounds like that is what EU wants “carbon neutral” to mean?
Carbon credits have been abused all sorts of ways as essentially a license to continue polluting. The EU’s current stance is that the credit programs are so fucked in this manner they no longer really count.
Apples current approach of ‘everything we can and credit the rest’ is still ahead of the majority of the industries position, but not surprising that EU don’t accept it as ‘zero carbon.’
What the EU would like is for everyone to take responsibility for their own carbon generation throughout the entire supply chain rather than buying credits from greener companies, whether this is realistic or practical is yet to be seen.
If I kill your dog but give you a new one I don’t think I could be described as “dog neutral”
This isn’t a great metaphor. My dog is a singular individual and another dog isn’t my dog, so you can’t represent it with numbers. A carbon molecule is equivalent to another carbon molecule and can be abstracted.
That said, carbon credits sure seems like making up numbers to make something bad look better, just not in this way.
Except one CO2 molecule trapped in a stable environment, like underground coal, or natural oil reserve, is absolutely not equivalent to some other CO2 molecule in a far less stable environment, like artificially replanted forests.
I actually liked my dog metaphor specifically because of just like one dog isn’t comparable to another, the carbon trade is turning stable CO2 into CO2 that might be released back into the atmosphere fairly quickly
I mean… okay. What if I took a $1 bill from you and replaced with 4 quarters? Would that be “money neutral”? These metaphors aren’t really clearing up my confusion.
Does the EU want carbon neutral to mean “zero carbon emitted during manufacturing/shipping/etc”?
If so, that’s fine and clears up my confusion.
I just think a “zero carbon” moniker would make more sense than “carbon neutral” which (at least to me) infers some kind of offset.
Not every CO2 “storage” is as stable as another one.
The way CO2 output is “negated” is usually with poor, short term storage, that won’t actually help for climate change, in exchange for extracting extremely stable CO2 sources like petrol or coal
I’m not arguing that offsets are “okay” but they are what I have always understood the term “carbon neutral” to mean. I don’t think very many people understood what I wrote 🤷♂️
It just sounds like you don’t know what the word “neutral” means tbh.
They could advertise it like "makes you leave your car at home to go to work“ and some sort of Duolingo type annoyances, to actually make you carbon negative!
(That totally sounds like billionaire speech)
yes but what can I do about the car?? I do need it, and I really like wearing it on my wrist, i feel so swag!
watch instead needs at least a roof, I’m always exposed to any weather and it’s super wrong how it can transport just one person at a time (usually me, in my case). also I think it gets too much scratches from the asphalt, I have to change the display screen every so often. strap it’s like super strong, instead.
luckily though I no longer need a smartphone.
BEUC is the umbrella group for 45 independent consumer organisations from 31 countries. Our main role is to represent them to the EU institutions and defend the interests of European consumers.
Can I have one for America please?
You had one, the CFPB, but then the Trump administration defunded it to death and the Biden ditto didn’t revive it.
At this point I don’t really care that much.
Pretty much all of Canada was on fire this summer and the entire country was dumping carbon into the atmosphere at record levels, far greater than anything man made in a year, so some watches that are being offset is pretty low on my list of anxiety inducing items.
Global warming is a thing but we may already be well past the point of no return when countries like China and India don’t care in the race to industrialize everything.
