The Tech Briefing
The Tech Briefing
Episode 13: Apple goes green & TikTok promises US jobs
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Episode 13: Apple goes green & TikTok promises US jobs

The podcast is now available on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.



Apple to be carbon neutral by 2030

Apple has unveiled a plan to become carbon neutral across it’s entire business, supply chain and product lifecycle by 2030, meaning every product Apple sells will have a net zero carbon impact. While today the company’s corporate operations are carbon neutral that doesn’t extend to the supply chain.

As a part of this they will reduce their carbon emissions by 75% while developing new carbon removal solutions for the remaining 25%.

Apple has set out it’s climate roadmap across 5 themes:

  1. Low Carbon Product Design. Designing products to be recyclable.

  2. Expanding Energy Efficiency. Identifying new ways to reduce energy usage across their operations.

  3. Renewable Energy. Maintaining it’s 100% use of renewable energy, and expanding this to it’s supply chain.

  4. Process and Material Innovations. Improving processes to reduce carbon emissions from product materials.

  5. Carbon Removal. Investment in nature-based solutions to carbon removal, such as the restoration and protection of forests.

Image: 80% of Apple’s renewable energy is from projects that Apple created.

Climate change and the environment in general has been a hot topic for corporates for some time but only recently has it really been a major item on the board’s agendas. Not only are consumers now extremely environmentally conscious but so too are shareholders.

Socially Responsible Investing (SRI) has increased rapidly over the last few years. Nutmeg, an easy to use consumer investment service, has seen major growth in it’s SRI portfolios which have on average 28% less carbon intensity than their regular portfolios. In a survey 35% of respondents stated that climate change was the cause they care about most, scoring higher than any other such as human right or executive pay.

We’re going to see more and more company’s in every industry looking very closely at climate change and the environment, even those in high impact industries such as oil are shifting significantly in their ways of thinking and operating, towards reducing their impact on the planet.


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TikTok promises US jobs

Last week we discussed how politicians were weaponising TikTok in their ongoing trade wars with China. This week we’ve seen TikTok increasingly try to distance itself from China and its government with an announcement that it will bring 10,000 jobs to the US. This no doubt in a bid to keep the Trump administration happy.

They currently employ around 1,400 people in the US, already up from 500 a year ago, so this would be a substantial increase, taking place over the next three years.

TikTok have said that “These are good-paying jobs that will help us continue to build a fun and safe experience and protect our community's privacy."

They also announced that they are considering London among other places to host its Headquarters outside of China, as well as looking to reorganise its corporate structure to take more of the management outside of China. They have already recruited an American CEO.

It’s clear that TikTok are well on the defensive. They have seen the fate of companies such as Huawei and ZTE and realise they must distance themselves from China if they are to grow and become successful in the west which is a lucrative market with a lot of deep pocketed advertisers.


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