Hey, it's Justine, and welcome to Same Brain. I'm missing my other brain, Jenna here, but I just got back from the Apple event this week where the new iPhone 15s, the Apple Watch Series 9 and the Apple Watch Ultra was announced.

Now, at the event, I also got a chance to sit down with Lisa Jackson, who is the Vice President of Environment, Policy, Social Initiatives, and John Ternas, who is the Vice President of Hardware Engineering at Apple.

After all of the environmental announcements that they made during the keynote, I was really interested to learn more about their initiative with their products, because they want to achieve the goal of their entire product lineup being carbon neutral by 2030.

That is a huge undertaking, so I was really excited to learn more, so let's hop into the interview with Lisa and John.

So you guys had a really big day today. Not only did you launch the iPhone, the Apple Watches, and now that you know, USB-C is on the iPhone, I think everyone's very excited, but one of the most exciting things about the presentation was the environmental aspects.

So do you guys want to walk through and kind of talk through your initiative for the next few years?

Yeah, I'm happy to start. Yeah, it is really exciting, so thank you for noticing that, and it's the culmination of a lot of work, a lot of time.

You know, I've been at Apple about 10 years, and we started environmental work before I got here, but you know, in 2018, we announced we were running the company on clean energy.

And by 2020, we announced that the company was carbon neutral, that our operations day to day, our stores, our buildings, our data centers, no impact on the climate.

But then we set this hugely ambitious goal that we call Apple 2030, because by Apple 2030, we want the entire company, every product that we make to also be carbon neutral.

And there's two things you have to do to make a product carbon neutral. You have to work with your supply chain to make sure they're all on clean energy.

It's out to bottom. And then you also have to end that the energy that our customers use to charge the devices is clean energy.

So that means we spend a lot of time on clean energy. And then it's really remarkable work on materials, which John can talk about as well.

So today, you know, for us, the Apple Watch is the culmination. It's a proof point.

It's proof that this pledge we made back in 2020 is real. It was incredibly ambitious when we said it. People were kind of like, hmm, don't know.

But it's happening. And it's also a promise. You know, it's action, not just words.

Now, for product and creation, I mean, there's so much that has to go into this. Like you said, supply chain and figuring out different types of designs to make this all work for the environment.

So how are you guys kind of thinking about that first and foremost for the Apple Watch, since that's your first product that is now carbon neutral.

And then going forward, meeting that goal. Yeah, it's, it's huge. It's, um, I mean, some ways 20, 30 feels like a long ways away.

But sometimes it feels very, very soon. Um, because I think, you know, this is probably the, the most ambitious and far-reaching engineering challenge, the challenge that many of us will tackle in our careers.

Like this is just, it's that hard. And it's that hard because I get to carbon neutral that in a way that doesn't compromise the quality of the product, the reliability of the product,

and the overall experience of what makes an Apple product and Apple product. And so to do that just requires a tremendous amount of innovation on materials and design and, you know, as Lisa said in the supply chain, how we make things.

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