Apple's Green Revolution: A Decade of Zero Carbon Emissions

OBJECTIVE

To be working as an independent journalist and data viz enthusiast. The task was to use the data provided by Apple in their Environmental Progress Reports to visualize their progress towards becoming carbon neutral in 2030.

DATA

Greenhouse Gas Emissions - sources of Apple's greenhouse gas emissions from 2015 to 2022 divided by category (corporate & product life cycle), scope (direct scope 1 emissions & indirect scope 2 and 3 emissions), and type (emissions & removals) Carbon Footprint by Product - emissions from the product life cycle of every baseline iPhone model released between 2015-2022. Normalizing Factors - Apple's revenue, market cap, and employees during the same period.

APPROACH

1. TABLEAU

First things first, an extensive exploratory data analysis to the data provided.

Carbon Emissions: The initial idea was to see the pattern of the carbon emissions by year. I wanted to show the forecasted values in the bar graph. Hence prepared another sheet with Emissions values and Carbon removals. Apple estimated there would be a decrease of 75% from 2015. According to the data, 2015 had 38.38M so estimated the value to be 9.59M and as it assumes to be carbon neutral by 2030, the carbon removal would also be -9.59M.

Scope wise Emissions: Another aspect I was looking at was the distribution of the emissions scope wise. Distributed the chart with respect to scopes and sorted with Min to Max form.

Compound Annual Growth Rate: Another sheet had year wise data of Market Capitalization, Revenue and Employees. I always wanted to show it on the page that will the products launched my year. All 3 values in the positive side provided to it look decent on one of the sides of the page.

2. RESEARCH

Next was to research on things the data could not provide. It was important to understand Apple's planning, Implementation and achievements. Hence was important to provide a timeline of the history of Apple's environment initiatives. A lot of news articles, research papers and reports provided this data.

Their target of reaching net-zero by 2030 raised a lot of questions regarding the possibility and why it is a critical goal for the company and the environment. To make it more understandable, it was necessary to provide a diagram about the different things coming under different scopes and what were the actions taken by Apple under each scope.

To achieve a target it is necessary to set some goals, track the completion percentage, challenges faced, actions taken on those challenges. From few other reports noted the 3 major goals Apple has set till 2030. During these they consistently faced challenges so it was necessary to evaluate and point out those. Also the important aspect of how Apple's goals can be compared with the other tech giants across the globe.

Course like ChatGPT for Data Analytics helped me in evaluating the impact Apple will create on the environment and its brand if they successfully complete their target of 2030.

Basically I wanted to answer questions like

• The significance of Apple's mission to achieve zero carbon emissions by 2030
• Why this is a critical goal for the company and the environment?
• An overview of Apple's environmental initiatives up to 2020
• Apple's commitment to reducing carbon emissions across its supply chain and products
• The year wise emissions data, highlighting the key milestones and changes over the decade
• The challenges and successes Apple faced in achieving emission reduction goals each year
• The strategies and technologies Apple employed to reduce emissions
• How Apple's initiatives have influenced other tech giants and industries to adopt similar sustainability goals
• Problems apple may face to become carbon neutral by 2030
• The long-term impact of Apple's zero carbon emissions mission on the environment and the company's brand.

3. FIGMA

The most important part of the report was to consolidate all the tableau and research work in the best presentable way. I was really amazed by the environment reports of Apple. I took some inspirations for the reports of 2021, 2022 and 2023.

Page 1 - TITLE : Neat and light colored theme. An image of the recently launched iPhone 15 and a box layout of the contents of the report. All those 6 boxes have images so as to be easier to understand the contents of the report in the first glance.

Page 2 - TIMELINE : Year 2010 till 2020 on a single page was a challenge. Tried it first as a single line, but the semi-pill shaped idea was the most suitable as it easily gave me space to put the TIMELINE in between. It is easier to read the given info by reading it in a flow from Top left to Bottom left.

Page 3 - EMISSIONS HISTORY : A bar chart was looking very simple and hence needed to fill the bottom right space with some KPIs-formed looking details. A lot of number games and eventually putting out the 6 major points regarding the historic and forecasted details in a simple format.

Page 4 - SCOPE WISE DETAILS : A custom diagram to show the distribution of scope wise parameters and what actually CARBON NEUTRAL means. All those icons were made on PowerPoint. Another empty space at the bottom left prompted me to add a year wise pie chart of how Apple managed to cut down the contribution of Manufacturing by 12%.

Page 5 - PRODUCTS : Another timeline of the products in the last 7year. The idea of placing the images in a cropped form was inspired from the front page of 2023 report.

Page 6 - GOALS CHALLANGES INFLUENCE : This page was divide into 3 horizontal space and then a simple line chart to evaluate the goals. A timeline in a word format in the challenges and similarly the influence.

Page 7 - IMPACT : The design was again inspired from Environment report and all these images were royalty free and stock images just as to explain the impacts in a a more meaningful way rather than just typing it down in a bullet form.