Today is Earth Day, and Apple Stores are marking the event with window decals that remind customers to recycle their old Apple products. Store employees have new green shirts.
Apple’s annual Earth Day celebration once included flashy green logos at significant stores. Year by year, the promotion has become less visible but more meaningful as the carbon footprint of new Apple Stores continues to shrink. The latest store projects are aggressively audited for supplier and material responsibility. Here’s an excerpt from Apple’s 2024 Environmental Progress Report:
Our new Apple Battersea retail location in the historic Battersea Power Station in London is trending to achieve a BREEAM Very Good rating. The build-out of the store and offices resulted in a 99 percent rate of diversion for construction waste. The retail store project uses our newest and most sustainable design language and materials, which heavily focuses on low-carbon design elements including a biopolymer terrazzo floor, sustainably harvested wood, reduced steel tonnage, and an acoustic baffle ceiling.
Though it’s not spelled out in the report, environment and social equity responsibility is a pillar of every Retail project from day one. Apple doesn’t build a store and then retroactively define sustainability success based on the metrics the project achieved. Rather, environmental goals are considered before a single shovel hits the dirt. These objectives influence every decision in the store design journey.
Parly 2 2.0
Apple Parly 2 in Le Chesnay, a suburb of Paris, is moving to a new space on April 27 at 10:00 a.m. According to Apple’s website, the new store is located on level 1 near the Vendôme door.
Apple Parly 2 opened on September 24, 2011 as the ninth Apple Store in France. The original store has an uncommon layout with a hidden upper level that’s accessible through a small glass staircase at the back of the store. Upstairs is the Genius Bar and one of the last remaining Startup counters.
Hefei
Two weeks ago, I mentioned that hiring had begun for a new store in Torrance, California. Now, Apple has begun hiring for another new store, this time in Hefei, the largest city in China’s Anhui province. This store will be Apple’s first in Anhui and 48th in mainland China. The nearest neighboring stores are in Nanjing. China is in the midst of an Apple Retail expansion with three new stores opening within the past year.
Today at Apple
Seven years ago this week, Apple announced the May 2017 global rollout of Today at Apple. Though the program was dealt a significant blow during the pandemic and never fully returned in its original grandeur, Apple continues to invest in new sessions on a smaller scale and has prepared some new Workshops and Talks for spring.
In mainland China, Taiwan, and South Korea, the collection “Recycle, Renew, Reimagine” offers sessions for Earth Day.
Sustainability-themed sessions are also planned at Apple SoHo, Carnegie Library, Aventura, Covent Garden, Regent Street, Dubai Mall, Al Maryah Island, and BKC (2, 3).
In all stores globally, Apple will “host a Pop-Up Studio titled Photograph Earth Like a Pro on iPhone, demoing features like macro photography and more on iPhone 15.”
On Saturdays from April 20 – May 25, select significant U.S. stores will offer Spotlight: Draw with Fraggle Rock, a session inspired by the Apple Original series Fraggle Rock: Back to the Rock.
Featured image
Apple Aix-en-Provence
Photo via @nico_graphe.