250: Corporate Sustainability – Greenwashing or Not?

Matt and Sean talk about corporations trying to improve on sustainability efforts. Where are they moving forward, and where are they falling behind?

Watch the Undecided with Matt Ferrell episode, Can Companies like Apple Save the Planet? https://youtu.be/dD3KgWiMlPs?list=PLnTSM-ORSgi7uzySCXq8VXhodHB5B5OiQ

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 On today’s episode of Still To Be Determined, we’re talking about corporations that are trying to do things that will be better for the planet. Where are they hitting the mark? Where are they missing the target? Hi everybody. I’m Sean Ferrell. I’m a writer. I write some sci fi and I write some stuff for kids, and I’m just generally curious about technology and luckily for me, my brother is that Matt from Undecided with Matt Ferrell, which of course takes a look at these topics, the emergence of tech into our lives and its impact on our everyday life. And before we get into today’s discussion, just a happy new year. It has been a while since Matt and I sat down to discuss one of his videos, we took a holiday break.

We hope everybody entered 2025 safely and happily and that you’re looking forward to a positive year for yourself, your family, and your loved ones. So before we get into the conversation, Matt, how are you doing? You’ve had a Normally we would dip into the mailbag, go back to our previous video, go back to your previous videos and pull a few things out.

But before we get into your most recent video, I just wanted to give you an opportunity to like big picture. You did a lot of travel. You did a lot of different things. You want to talk about some of the highlights from the past month or so.

Oh man, I’ve been traveling like nonstop for the past two months.

Uh, the video where we’re about to discuss, which is the BMW video and Apple video, the industry one. I was in Mexico. I was in Germany. Um, I’ve been to Canada a couple of times for a fully charged live. I went to a wind farm that was being built. That video still has to come out. We’re working on it still.

Um, and then just now I just got back from CES. I was in Las Vegas for the past week. Way more travel than I’m used to, Sean. I’m not built for this. And there’s more travel coming up. I’m trying to get out to Copenhagen, back to the UK. Um, so it’s like, there’s a whole bunch of stuff coming up that I’m trying to organize.

So still not built for it. It’s taking its toll.

Uh, yeah, that’s more than, uh, I tend to take a big trip once every other year. Yeah. And every time I take a big trip, I think, Oh, it’s time for me to go somewhere. It’s been too long. And then I take the big trip and I immediately think, this is why I don’t take big trips.

And, you know, we have a moderate trip coming up. My partner and I have a moderate sized trip coming up in a few weeks, but yeah, I can’t imagine your past six weeks schedule because there were points in time where you would casually say like, Oh, I’m not even in the country in text message to me and I’d be like, wait, what, what?

And, and also do you want to visit just briefly how many illnesses you bore the brunt of during these past six weeks? Even if you had been around, even if you had thought like, let’s record, let’s not take a holiday break, let’s record an episode. I don’t think you could have recorded episodes because you were sick as a dog for much of

your downtime.

For weeks. I, uh, I got it. I got some kind of cold when I was in Mexico when I, when I got back. And then from Germany, I caught covid for the first time. I’d never had covid before. And Covid lingered for three weeks. It was, it was like, I got sick and I took, what was it? The Pax Lovid, which is helps to suppress it.

But there’s sometimes with Pax Lovid, there can be a rebound that you get. Guess who got the rebound? Uh, cause it went like through one cycle. I felt better. And then I got sick all over again. And it took three weeks to go through both cycles. I was just not fun. And now I’m just waiting for. Am I going to get sick from CES?

It’s like, it’s been two days and I’m still healthy. Uh, I’m hoping it stays that way. Cause

yeah, I’m sick of being sick. Yeah. Fingers crossed for you that you don’t get the Vegas typhoid that’s going around. On now to our discussion about Matt’s most recent. This is can companies like Apple save the planet?

This is his video, which was the result of travel to two different plants associated with BMW in which he went to Mexico and to Germany. And he also talked a bit about some of the recent changes in how Apple is doing their business in trying to lean into more sustainable and environmentally friendly goals like heat recapture in a plant that allows them to keep the energy that is being just normally just wasted from a company, uh, a manufacturing plant, repurposing it and using it in a different place in the same plant or for packaging from Apple. Can we make packaging that is completely out of products that are grown and therefore recyclable by tossing them in with your paper bin as opposed to throwing them into the garbage bin?

There was a lot of conversation around this video from the perspective of, Matt, you’re missing the point. We shouldn’t be rewarding corporations because they do one good thing a week and the rest of the week, they’re terrible. So on now to that discussion, we have, uh, there were, uh, A number of comments that I thought did a good job of standing up as examples of a lot of comments.

So when we’re talking about these, what we’re going to be talking about are kind of like the peak of the iceberg comments that are going to then lead onto a discussion about the bigger concepts behind what Matt was trying to talk about in his video and what these companies are doing and how we not aren’t necessarily in a position where we’re trying to measure are they good now We’re simply talking about things that they are doing now.

And that is a metric that Matt and I wanted to lean on for this conversation. So first we have this from Toastmaster5000 who points out, BMW and Apple are doing impressive work in their production process, but both companies are some of the most egregious examples of undermining the right to repair, which helps prevent a product from being scrapped that otherwise had plenty of life left in it.

While Apple is pretty good about long term support and has a recycling program, BMW is particularly bad about planned obsolescence. If BMW builds their vehicles to be easily repaired and long lasting, then I’ll give them huge credit. Until then, I just see what they’re doing here as a means of reducing cost of operation.

So right to repair is something we’ve talked about a lot in this, in this program. We’ve talked about recycling programs, reusing programs, uh, and right to repair. And so when you hear a comment like this, and you’ve just been to, uh, a plant or when you’ve looked at a company that are looking at ways of, not necessarily opening up the product to give the consumer the right to get into it, but giving consumers reliance on better packaging, better shipping, better manufacturing that has lower sustainability issues. Where do you land in a response there? Do you look at what this comment is pointing out and say, Oh, that changes my mind about everything that’s going on in these plants, or do you think it’s, well, yeah, the company has done something good in this way and we need to continue to apply pressure on this other front as well.

Yeah, these two things are to me are not linked, they’re separate issues and I’m a big believer in right to repair as well. And yes, Apple has been notoriously bad about that. They’re getting better on certain products in certain small ways. And when it happens and you see these breakdowns in new products, you’ll see sometimes like the people who break down are like surprised of like, Oh, Oh, they actually made the RAM changeable on this one.

So it’s like, it’s, They are doing things in slightly better ways here and there, but it’s something we absolutely have to keep putting pressure on all these companies, not just Apple, BMW, it’s like, It’s a pervasive problem. So I do agree with Toastmaster. Yes, but that does not negate the benefits that they’re getting from the other changes that I highlighted in the videos of they’re doing a better job about using more recycled products.

So that recycled aluminum, which means less mining and needing to be done on that side, reusing components and other materials, uh, reusing heat, like in the BMW plant, it’s like, you know, There’s all these things that they’re doing that you kind of do have to applaud and say, these are examples of ways that companies can become more sustainable.

And it’s, it wasn’t for me in this specific video, it was not me saying BMW is a gold star that everybody should be like, it was more of a BMW and Apple are doing these interesting things that other companies could do as well. It’s just kind of like, uh, using them as kind of just a, I don’t know, I don’t want to say every man, but like kind of just like an example of what can be done and probably what should be done in some areas. But it was not me saying they’re good across the board. It was just highlighting some of the advances they’re making. Um, for Apple to kind of specifically, I don’t know if I, I don’t think I said it in the video, but Apple a number of years ago kind of drew a line in the sand and said, we want to become a sustainable company.

And here’s our goals by 2030. And one of the things that Apple’s been really good about doing is they’re updating us every year on how they’re progressing to that goal. Um, most companies are not that transparent. Um, some are moderately transparent, but Apple’s actually done a really good job of communicating where they want to go and where they are today.

And every year they’re getting better and better and better. And it’s the same kind of thing we need to do with right to repair. We need to put pressure on companies to do this as well there. And that’s the other thing I kind of didn’t come across in this video, obviously, cause it was not the point, but we don’t, don’t let the, and don’t let perfect be the enemy of the good.

It’s like we, just because a company does some things that you don’t like doesn’t mean that we can, we should discount the good things that they’re doing. But at the same time, the opposite is also true. We should not. Take our, take the pressure off because they’ve done a few good things, right? And they’re still doing a whole bunch of stuff that’s wrong.

We still need to put pressure on them to get better across the board. None of these companies can turn on a dime. They’re massive operations. Very complex logistics, and they can only do improvements a piece at a time. And, and I’ve been looking at these companies for years, and it’s like they are doing that.

They are making changes here and there to try to get better. And that’s why, part of the reason why Apple set goals for 2030 and not saying, we’re going to be sustainable next year. Because that would be impossible. They have to, In some cases, the supply chains for what they need to do don’t exist.

They’re building them now. So it’s like they need time to make this stuff happen. So this video is kind of a snapshot in time. It’s not a, we’re done, like clap our hands and walk away. So that would be kinda my response to Toastmaster is I agree with you completely that right to repair is important. Um, but on, on the BMW thing about, uh, obsolescence, I’m not exactly sure what he’s talking about because while I was there, I got to go into one of their, um, by the main factory in Munich.

There’s a, um, repair shop, and I saw BMWs there from the 1950s, 1960s, perfect working condition. So it’s like, I, I’m not sure. What right to repair issues you’re pushing at for BMW? Maybe it’s because they only work with specific BMW parts and you can’t get from third parties and stuff like that. That may be the issue that Toastmasters bringing up, but it’s not that these cars don’t work long term because they absolutely do.

But maybe it’s he’s referring to you have to buy specific BMW parts and nobody else is allowed to make them. If that’s the case, I’m right there with you Toastmaster.

Yeah, that goes in the same vein as one of the comments that I saw and thought of myself as I was watching the video, which is, it’s great to see Apple saying like packaging that is paper based, packaging that is natural fiber based.

Uh. But also knowing that it felt like every time they released a new phone, they changed how the charging cord worked. So you end up with a thousand different charging cords that you can’t use on any other products because Apple’s proprietary jack was the thing. And it’s, that’s part of the thing I think that sticks out when you’re looking at what a company is trying to do and you also are very aware of the things that they historically have done. It is hard to, it is hard to acknowledge progress when you’ve got a drawer that has 12 different charging cords in it that you don’t know what to do with. Um, and you know, universal standards.

Sadly, when you say universal standards and right to repair and all that, a lot of that isn’t going to fall on the company. That’s going to fall on pressure on politicians. A lot of that is going to come down to, can we get regulations, policies, and laws put in place that are going to make companies do those things?

Because on their own, we know companies don’t do a lot of these things that they should be doing on their own if it doesn’t meet the bottom line. And that is something I was aware of as I was watching the video. I am certain that it’s something that was on your mind as you were making the video.

It was, but it was just, again, it wasn’t in the, it felt to me like it was off topic for the point I was trying to make in the video. So that’s part of the reason why I didn’t, I didn’t venture down that path. Back to the

idea of the right to repair, the Policy, regulatory, and legislative solutions that might be ahead of us in that regard, Philip jumped in the comments to say, as of 2025, all electronics in the EU must be easy to repair.

Apple has no choice but to follow this law. It is highly likely that this will also lead to easy to repair electronics in non EU countries, since it is not likely that Apple will produce the same product in a different way for other countries, because that would mean additional cost. This is also called the Brussels effect.

And for our viewers and listeners, I thought it would be fun to share what the Brussels effect is. The Brussels effect is the process of unilateral regulatory globalization caused by the European union, who de facto, but not necessarily de jure, externalizes its laws outside its borders through market mechanisms.

Through the Brussels effect, regulated entities, especially corporations, end up complying with EU laws, even outside of the EU for a variety of reasons. The effect is named after the city of Brussels, the de facto capital of the European Union. This is similar to the impact in the United States of, on educational publishing. Texas and Florida change textbooks for every state in the country, simply because Texas and Florida buy so many textbooks. California with its environmental protection regulations has had an impact across the United States with labeling, that you’ll buy a product here and where I am in New York, and it will say, Oh, by the way, California wanted to let you know, this product may cause cancer.

Always a fun label to find on, on a product because it incorporates chemicals in production or maybe a certain type of paint or degassing might be taking place that no other state is really thinking about, but California is letting you know, Oh, by the way, this frying pan you just bought might kill you.

This is in this case is evoked as the Brussels effect. You could also say there’s the California effect, the Texas, Florida impact. You could name them all these different things, but the reality is. Yes, local regulation, state regulation, regional regulation, all of these can lead to global impact. And that is one of the things that I was thinking about as we were talking about in the earlier instance, the idea of a corporation doing the right thing for the wrong reasons, this is another one of those places where a corporation might do the right thing for the wrong reason, well, they’ll do it.

Because the EU said they had to,

but it benefits everybody. It’s

like Apple with

the USB C, uh, cables. It’s like part of the reason that they’ve, they’re going USB C across everything is, EU said you have to do that. And all I can say is thank you, EU. Right. Cause I hated the lightning

cable. So with that in mind, how much are you seeing in the topics that you discussed in this video?

And in your research for other things that you’re looking into now, how much are you seeing this kind of effect? And do you think that this kind of Brussels effect, let’s instead of calling it the Brussels effect in this moment, let’s call it just like the local impact in the global, how much are you seeing that in various fields that you’re researching?

And do you think It’s kind of the inverse of the canary in the coal mine. Do you think it gives a glimmer of hope to say like, look, if you care about a thing, advocate, advocate for that change locally, let it work its way up the chain in those ways. Reach out to your, to your state government, your Local government, if you can’t get your state to respond, work at the local level to make changes that will have that kind of positive impact that you would like to see.

Are you seeing that in your research on different topics, including this one from the BMW plant, the Apple, the Apple

changes? Yes. Yeah. I mean, it’s also not just in my research. It’s the stuff I’ve been seeing, um, here in Massachusetts. Uh, there’s a YouTube channel called Rich Rebuilds. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen him.

He’s really funny. Um, I’ve actually gotten to know him a little bit. He, uh, built out one of the first EV repair shops in the country. And part of the problem he was running into was he couldn’t get his hands on official Tesla parts. He couldn’t get his hands on official parts from another company. So he was having to like basically buy totaled a totaled car and then pull out the parts he needed that could actually be reused to be able to repair EVs, to repair a Tesla car and stuff like that.

Um, he championed part of the right to repair bill that was passed here in Massachusetts. He was a big proponent and reason that that bill got passed, and it’s had a kind of a trickle out effect across the country here in the U. S. So, it’s like, gotta applaud Rich and others in Massachusetts for really kind of pushing that hard here, and it’s been having an impact broader than what you would expect from a tiny state like Massachusetts.

Like I brought up the, uh, the USBC change in the EU. EU also has regulations around, uh, basically electronics companies. are responsible for recycling the products that they put in the world. That doesn’t exist at a federal level here in the United States, but that change in the EU has had a ripple effect around the world and on products that we buy here in the US.. It’s like you brought it up, it’s like a company’s not going to do something Two or three different ways, if they can avoid it because it adds additional cost and complexity to their manufacturing system. They’re just going to do it once and just sell it everywhere if they can, because it can help reduce costs.

So these local regulations that we see popping up around things do sometimes trickle out much broader than that. So it’s, it’s, this is one of those, we cannot rely on companies just doing all the right things on their own. We do have to champion it and it can have a big impact at your local level. Just if you’re passionate about right to repair, try to get a bill passed in your local area, and it could potentially have a much bigger impact.

Finally, I wanted to talk about a concept that was brought up by multiple commenters, the idea of corporate greenwashing, they take the, the opportunity to go to the press or to have a positive spotlight shown on one section of the company while the rest of the company is out there doing business as usual, in toxic ways that are negatively impacting the wider community and the world. So I wanted to give you the opportunity to talk about the concept of greenwashing. It obviously is real. Companies do do this. They are going to come out and say like, Hey, look, we’re doing this thing to filter this water and then meanwhile, they’re dumping things out the back door.

But does that mean we change how we respond to plants like BMW built or what Apple is doing with their packaging? Where do you land in how we balance these

two ends of this thing? I think it comes down to like what I was saying before, you can’t discount what a company’s doing right because they’re doing something bad, but you can still point out what they’re doing bad and say that they have to do more.

So you can basically like, if you want to use the example in my video, you The things I talked about about Maersk, Apple, BMW, all the things, the examples of what they were doing that was really interesting when it comes to sustainability and moving the needle forward. You can say, almost like improv, yes, and it’s like, yes, good job.

And what’s next? Yes. And what’s next? So it’s like, we can still expect them to do more and we can still pressure them to do more. I still think it’s worth highlighting the things they are doing right because there are other companies that aren’t doing any of that, and it’s kind of one of those, hey, look, they’re, they’re not just doing this because it’s the right thing to do for the planet, but they’re actually saving some money and wouldn’t you like to save money?

Because it’s like my, my whole attitude towards this is I don’t care what a person’s motivation is or a company’s motivation is for doing the right thing. So if a company is doing the right thing because it saves them money. Or if the company is doing the right thing because it’s good for the environment.

I don’t care. As long as they’re doing the right thing that’s better for what my, what I find important, what I find important is doing the right thing for the environment. So if a company is doing the right thing for the environment, I don’t care if they’re doing it to save money or not. If they’re doing it, they’re doing it.

And you gotta kind of applaud and say, yes, yes. And what’s next. So I do appreciate all those comments and the threads of people like pushing on that look like calling out like, well, they’re still doing X, Y, or Z. And it sucks and it’s like, yes, but they’re still doing something that’s good and we should still highlight the things that are doing that they’re doing are good.

Greenwashing to me is, um, when a company is obviously like you just pointed out, you know, like, don’t look what we’re doing at back here. We’re doing great right here. It’s like that to me is greenwashing. And I hope what I did didn’t come across as greenwashing. It was just, I was trying to highlight some of the cool technologies that are being implemented in manufacturing that are making an impact, and it wasn’t about the companies per se. So it wasn’t about Apple’s awesome, BMW’s awesome. It was like, Hey, look how heat recovery can work in a manufacturing plant. Oh, Hey, look how recapturing water can work in a manufacturing plant. Oh, look how we use paper products and we use recycled aluminum and making something.

It’s like that’s what I was focused on and it wasn’t the companies themselves. Uh, and that’s where I think things got, there was a disconnect between me and a lot of the commenters. And I, I. I didn’t see that coming. So that kind of caught me off guard. And if I could do this video over again, I would definitely take that.

I would definitely do it in a slightly different way because I missed the mark in how I communicated why I was talking about what I was talking about. And many people, many, many people read into it that I was kind of champing the companies, which was not the goal. It was more of the, the specific things of, isn’t this way of doing this cool?

And this way of doing this is a no brainer, like facepalm, everybody should be doing this. That’s kind of what I was trying to highlight, not the company themselves.

Yeah. I think ending on that idea is a good spot to, to say like, you are not wrong to say like, it’s impressive to say you can use, you can capture a hundred, a hundred percent of used water while manufacturing a car.

Like that is an impressive feat to have accomplished. And that is something that you should say, look, if they can do it, everybody could do it. Yep. If they can do it, where else can that be done? A hundred percent. They can do it. Why aren’t we leaning on that as the standard instead of saying, well, the base standard is just don’t give too many people cancer.

Like that, like that is, I think something that is worth focusing on because if you don’t focus on that, then how does anybody learn about it? How does anybody know it can be done? How can anybody know what to ask for? So I think it’s something worth examining. And, uh, Appreciate not only the video, but all the comments and the commenters.

And we invite you all who are watching or listening us right now, jump into the comments here. Let us know what you thought about this discussion. Is there an aspect of this that you want to make sure we revisit in the future? We’d love to hear what you have to say. Your comments are a huge component of this program and they help inform Matt’s program on Undecided.

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We appreciate the welts. And then we talk about how we in our personal life can recycle all of our water. Ooh, thank you everybody for taking the time to watch or listen. And we’ll talk to you next time.

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