Designed by Apple in California. Made by people everywhere.
Apple products are made possible by millions of people in over 50 countries. From sourcing to recycling, we apply the highest standards to ensure every person in our supply chain is valued, respected and safe.
Our values lead the way.
People dedicated to people.
The highest standards.
Apple has zero tolerance for forced labour or human rights violations of any kind. Our Human Rights Policy outlines how we treat everyone that our business reaches — our employees, our customers and the people in our supply chain. Apple suppliers are held to the highest standards of labour and human rights, health and safety, environmental stewardship, and ethics.
In addition to having thousands of Apple employees onsite at our suppliers’ facilities every day, we evaluate their performance in upholding our standards through rigorous independent assessments, completing over 1,100 last year alone. Across all assessments last year, including surprise audits, we found no instances where anyone was forced to work in our supply chain. No matter where people work, they are protected by our industry-leading standards.
If violations are found during our assessments, suppliers are required to fix the issues and take steps to prevent them from happening again. Suppliers found to have serious violations of our standards face immediate consequences including providing remedies to those affected, financial consequences and probation. Any supplier that is unable or unwilling to meet our standards risks termination of their business with us.
When it comes to people in our supply chain, age is not just a number.
Our Supplier Code of Conduct sets strict labour and human rights requirements, such as the prevention of underage labour. Suppliers are required to meticulously verify the age of all employees before they start work, and must maintain detailed records supporting this verification, which we audit regularly. Because we drive the highest standards and enforce steep consequences for violators, underage labour issues are rare in our supply chain — zero underage violations have been found in the last two years, but we never stop looking.
3M+people covered by the Apple Supplier Code of Conduct.
50+countries where Apple suppliers operate.
Powered by worker voices.
Workers speak volumes. We’re all ears.
A single voice can bring powerful change. That’s why we’re focused on ways to amplify the voices of people across our supply chain, like conducting interviews and surveys and providing hotlines for people to raise concerns, while protecting privacy and anonymity. With this feedback, we work directly with suppliers to make improvements to their workplaces. The most common feedback we receive centres on topics such as expanding transport options, improving food service offerings, and providing opportunities to develop management practices through increased training.
We also partner with leading human rights experts, including the International Organization for Migration and the International Labour Organization, to help us strengthen our programmes.
Upholding labour and human rights.
Everyone deserves to be treated with dignity and to have their rights respected, and we are deeply committed to ensuring that this is the case for people across our supply chain, regardless of where they work or what their job is. Among many protections, it’s mandatory that our suppliers provide fair working hours, a safe work site and an environment free from discrimination.
There’s power in these rights. We require our suppliers to provide every person in our supply chain with training in workplace rights, and in 2021 we launched an innovative platform to deliver a world-class experience. This helps make sure that people across our supply chain receive the best education possible, and enables us to identify gaps in supplier employees’ knowledge of local laws, labour and human rights, and workplace requirements. To ensure that people in our supply chain do not encounter a situation where their rights are disrespected, it’s mandatory for suppliers to provide effective ways to report grievances, and they are prohibited from interfering with workers’ lawful right to organise. We prohibit suppliers from retaliating against their employees for speaking up. Last year we contacted over 42,000 people to confirm that they did not experience retaliation as a result of participating in interviews during assessments of their employers.
23.6M+people trained on their workplace rights since 2008.
600K+supplier employees surveyed about their workplace experience since 2021.
Educating tomorrow’s innovators. Today.
Career growth. There’s a path for that.
The people working in our supply chain today shape tomorrow’s supply chain innovations. That’s why we’re excited to launch the Apple Education Hub, an expansion of our existing education and skill-building programmes for people across our supply chain and in the surrounding communities. People working for our suppliers can access opportunities for advancement in fields like robotics and coding, as well as gain leadership and other professional skills. Through a tailored curriculum that includes virtual and in-person education sessions focusing on in-demand skills, we plan to provide opportunities to over 100,000 people by the end of 2022.
5M+education programme participants since 2008.
100Kpeople in our supply chain to be reached by our new Apple Education Hub by the end of 2022.
Safer places and high‑tech spaces.
No compromises on health and safety.
COVID-19 response and risk mitigation.
We provide proactive support to suppliers that are implementing recommended local safety protocols during the global health crisis. This includes rearranging factory floor plans to accommodate social distancing, staggering schedules, providing onsite testing and maintaining thorough deep-cleaning standards. Since this issue is much bigger than our supply chain, we shared our learnings and safety tools with more than 170 companies across industries through the Responsible Business Alliance.
Safety is built in from the start.
Reviews of supplier safety practices begin long before manufacturing starts — especially during the development of new manufacturing techniques. We continue to help suppliers build an environment where safety is a constant conversation and focus. We also make sure that people working for our suppliers have access to customised wellness training programmes covering nutrition, self-exams for early cancer detection and reproductive health.
Suppliers are also required to uphold our industry-leading chemical safety standards. This includes strict safety measures to be sure supplier employees and the local environment are protected. And we’re going much further. By partnering with chemical experts and non-profit organisations that specialise in chemical safety and worker protections, we’re accelerating the adoption of safer, greener cleaners and creating a market for these across the industry.
2.5M+wellness training participants.
170+companies across multiple industries able to access Apple’s COVID supply chain protocols and tools.
Facilities fit for innovation.
High-precision, advanced workplaces.
Building innovative products requires working with world-class manufacturing partners and skilled employees. Our suppliers operate some of the most technologically advanced manufacturing facilities on the planet, designed to perform at the level of precision and quality necessary to build our products. For example, we supported a manufacturer in deploying a recovery system to capture heat generated from equipment and convert it to warm water for use in nearby living areas. The new energy management system allowed the supplier to find ways to be more energy efficient, while still performing highly engineered and specified manufacturing processes for Apple.
Two-time EPA Safer Choice Partner of the Year.
Beyond the benchmarks.
We partner with our suppliers to help them uphold the highest standards to keep people safe on the job. In 2021 we received the Safer Choice Partner of the Year Award from the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for the second year in a row, in recognition of our work to scale the use of safer cleaners and degreasers in our supply chain. And for the third year running, Apple received an A+ rating from Mind the Store, a ranking that evaluates the largest retailers in North America on how they ensure the chemical safety of their products and packaging. We were also ranked #1 out of the 50 retailers evaluated as part of the Mind the Store Retailer Report Card in 2021.
A+rating from Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families for eliminating toxic chemicals.
1stconsumer electronics company to receive the EPA Safer Choice Partner of the Year Award.
A planet-sized plan.
Carbon neutral. We’re zeroed in.
This promise has a plan.
Our worldwide corporate operations are carbon neutral. And our goal is to reach carbon neutrality across our entire footprint by 2030 — including our supply chain and the energy required to use our products. To do this, we’re committed to transitioning our entire supply chain to 100 per cent renewable energy, while also ensuring that our suppliers’ facilities are as energy efficient as possible. Over the last year, we have more than doubled the number of suppliers that have committed to running their Apple production on renewable energy, accelerating progress towards our 2030 goal.
175Apple suppliers committed to using renewable energy for their Apple production.
Environmental rights are human rights.
Doing more to waste less.
Everyone has the right to safe water, clean air and a community free from waste and pollution. And for Apple, zero waste is more than a goal or certification. It’s a mindset. We see it as our responsibility to reduce waste at every stage of a product’s life cycle — from design to manufacturing to end of life. As we scale our zero waste efforts, more suppliers have access to resources and training, and in some cases, onsite support from Apple experts.
Advancing racial equity and supplier diversity.
We believe that equity takes initiative. Last year Apple welcomed the first cohort of participants to our Impact Accelerator for Black- and Brown-owned businesses, as part of our larger Racial Equity and Justice Initiative. The Impact Accelerator expands access to opportunity for suppliers in the US by ensuring that our investments in sectors like renewable energy, carbon removal and recycling innovation also help fight systemic barriers impacting communities that are disproportionately affected by environmental issues like climate change.
100%of hardware final assembly sites are Zero Waste verified.
2M+tonnes of waste destined for landfill has been diverted by suppliers since 2015.
Closer to closing the material sourcing loop.
High-water marks.
Water is a critical resource shared by people and ecosystems around the world. Protecting shared water resources requires management that is environmentally sound and economically sustainable, and helps to make communities more resilient. We encourage our suppliers to go further, becoming stewards of local water resources. To date, 17 of our suppliers’ facilities have received certification through the Alliance for Water Stewardship (AWS), the world’s leading water stewardship organisation. Of those certified, 15 were given Platinum status, the highest level of recognition. As part of the AWS certification process, independent auditors look at a number of factors inside and outside the facility, including how it engages with the community, to understand the collective responsibility suppliers share to protect water resources.
Consider the sourcing.
Our goal is to build our products using only recycled and renewable materials. Closing the loop on the materials used in our products is important for emissions reductions and for human safety. For example, iPhone 13 is the first Apple product to incorporate 100 per cent certified recycled gold. And we’ve invested heavily in aluminium recycling technologies, with 100 per cent recycled aluminium cases and enclosures across our latest iPad devices, Apple Watch Series 7 and the new MacBook Pro.
An important part of closing material loops is helping recyclers to efficiently and safely recycle our products. To do this, we developed Apple Recycler Guides to provide guidance for professional electronics recyclers on how to safely disassemble Apple products and maximise recovery of resources. While we continue to move towards using recycled and renewable materials, our suppliers are required to source primary minerals responsibly and follow strict environmental and human rights standards.
The first battery of its kind.
In 2021 we achieved an industry first — a battery containing 100 per cent responsibly sourced and recycled key minerals. All identified smelters and refiners producing the key minerals contained in this battery have participated in independent third-party audits to assess their compliance with labour, human rights and environmental standards, helping to protect people and the planet at the deepest levels of our supply chain.
100%of tin, tungsten, tantalum, gold, cobalt and lithium refiners participated in 2021 audits.
