doctorcherryCarbon-neutral Apple Watch claims rejected as bogus in Europe
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.
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?
If I kill your dog but give you a new one I don’t think I could be described as “dog neutral”
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.
CalamityBallsI think the BEUC reaction came from the product itself not being carbon neutral. Apple paid for credits to "offset" the carbon released in production, but that carbon is still released in production. Also where they invested to get said credits is a timber plantation for making pulp, not a great carbon capture project.
To return to simile, it's like labeling a product as non-toxic because the toxins only release after a few years.
The other person infers an offset from the term “carbon neutral,” which they wouldn’t infer from “zero carbon.”
The point about the timber plantation would support this not really counting as an offset, but I don’t know how they calculate that. If the lumber for the pulp would otherwise have come from wild forests, I could see it, but I suspect they wouldn’t. The timber plantation has just figured out a very shrewd way to get paid to sow their own product. Frankly, I think that should be fraud unless they can prove a ratio between trees planted as offsets and wild trees not felled, but I don’t know if that would incentivize them more to maintain loggers in natural forests, which is obviously worse. Maybe logging operations shouldn’t be eligible for carbon offsets regardless of how they’re substantiated?
Rabin credits are corporate green washing bullshit. Direct action would be better IMO. Plant a fucking Forrest.
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 🤷♂️