For a while now, Apple has been shipping its iPhones without chargers to help cut down on waste, reduce the amount of packaging used and potentially help keep costs of its phones lower than they may otherwise have been. Dissatisfied with this state of affairs, students from China (the country with the highest carbon emissions) have sued Apple and want the tech giant to provide a wall charger, $16 for breach of contract and for the firm to cover the legal fees.
According to the student trying to get the compensation from Apple, the USB-C to Lightning cable that came with iPhone 12 is not compatible with other chargers on the market and they were then unable to charge their new iPhone as advertised on Apple’s website. The students fighting Apple said that Chinese phone manufacturers currently give consumers a choice of whether to include a charger.
On Apple’s website, at least in the UK, once you add an iPhone to your bag, you are offered a choice to add accessories. Apple’s wireless MagSafe charging solutions are shown first and towards the bottom of the page is the USB-C Power Adapter that plugs into a wall. The students believe that Apple has cynically removed the free charger, not for environmental reasons, but so people buy the MagSafe charger and they point out that wireless charging is less efficient than wired charging, therefore, they say Apple doesn’t really give a damn about the environment as it claims to.
More and more phone companies are opting for a model where you purchase your phone and then buy the charger separately and this is fine because most people will still have compatible chargers lying around from previous phone purchases and waste is reduced. If Apple wanted to reduce waste further, it could remove the USB-C to Lightning cable and just change the iPhone connector to USB-C. There are currently ongoing efforts by the European Union to force all phone manufacturers to use USB-C instead of their own standards.