Contemporary Issues Influensing Apple’S Products Design Solution

Apple was found on April 1, 1976 in California by Steve Jobs, Steve Woznick and Ronald Wayne. According to Stoller, 2017, based on revenue Apple is the world’s ninth-largest company. In 2011 to address the global impact of carbon emissions, Apple started using renewable energy source of solar, water, wind, and biogas fuel cells, this has had the effect of reducing carbon emissions from their worldwide operations by 54%, preventing 1.2 million metric tons of carbon emissions from entering the atmosphere. In 2017 alone, reduced carbon emissions were 590,000 metric tons. Apple have also made changes in their aluminum suppliers transitioning renewable energy to cut their greenhouse gas emissions by 2.6 million metric tons. Manufacturing makes up 77% of their carbon footprint. Most of it is due to carbon emissions from the electricity used to make their product. Apple are always innovating their manufacturing processes to minimize waste and to depend less on raw materials from earth with an ideal future aim to reach zero waste. An example of such process is Apple’s use of Liam, a disassembly robot which disassembled only iPhone 6s parts and segregating them to be easily reused. This innovation has been upgraded and introduced the new disassembly robot “Daisy” to disassemble all iPhone devices. For example, Daisy has the potential for every 100,000 iPhone devices to save a wide range of minerals such as aluminum, gold, rare earths and copper.

DaisyLiam

As shown in Figure 1, the manufacturing process that Apple are using is a closed loop chain where they reuse and recycle their products instead of using more of new raw materials from earth and dispose the old products. As for figure 2, it shows the measurement of Apple’s environmental footprint through the impact that their products have on the planet. Figure 3 shows the measurement of 2017’s reduced carbon footprint.

There are many types of contemporary issues that Apple’s products design solution impacted. Some of those issues are:

Physical and Social: Apple sets strict standards for the materials they use in their devices to protect people and the planet. They start evaluating the materials during the design and manufacturing phases and if the replacements of the hazardous chemicals aren’t available, they find a way to eliminate the need for that material. As they test the replacements, they look for formulations that meet their environmental standards without conceding performance.They have built their own environmental testing lab where chemists look for harmful substances. They even manufactured artificial sweat to simulate human exposure to the products and evaluate the safety of the materials that come into contact with skin. For example, Apple watch bands are placed in jars of artificial sweat in an incubator that stimulates the temperature of the human body. To protect the people who work at Apple they have identified toxins through the evaluation of from the products to remove them and develop new materials that are safer. Some of these materials are Beryllium, Mercury which they replaced it with using energy-efficient, mercury-free LEDs and OLEDs instead of mercury-based fluorescent lamps and Lead an exempted substance that they phased out the use of it where technically possible.

To address the problem of planned obsolescence Apple has repair services through the Authorized Service Provider which gives longer use of their devices, as well as software updates that make people feel up to date with the new versions of their products without throwing away the old ones to buy the newest version.

Ecological: Apple started the first solar project in Singapore by providing 32 megawatts of solar panels on more than 800 rooftops in the city. The Apple partnership will also give Sunseap financing to complete the solar project, said Ms. Lisa Jackson, Apple's Vice President of Environment, Policy and Social Initiatives. Also, by using the disassembly robots, Apple consumed less time and money on buying new raw materials from earth.

Apple have their suppliers commit to 100% renewable energy for Apple production.Cultural:Apple Provided solar panels that were built high enough to let sunlight shine through to help grow grass for the Yaks to eat in China as Yaks have important roles in Tibetan culture.

Market research - market segment, attributes of the product marketed as having sustainable value, relative performance data, competing products, identify marketing problem(s). Apple’s target customer segment includes people who are willing to pay more for technology products and services with innovative designs, purposes and capabilities. The products that Apple manufacture are meant to be easy-to-use to make sure that their customers get what their looking for without putting too much energy into the product. On YouTube, Apple advertise their environmental approaches through videos in their channel like how the solar farms feed Yaks or how apple workers come up with an idea of growing a forest and have eco-friendly packages.