Apple Banned Claims Apple Watch As A "Netral CO2" Product In Germany

Apple can no longer advertise Apple Watch as a "neutral CO2" product in Germany (photo: x @Richana_R)

JAKARTA Apple was no longer able to advertise Apple Watch as a "neutral CO2" product in Germany after a court in Frankfurt won an environmental group lawsuit against the US tech giant.

In a verdict announced Tuesday, August 26, the panel of judges declared Apple's claim about Apple Watch as our first CO2 neutral product unproven and violating Germany's business competition law. This decision is considered an important victory in an effort to counter greenwashing practices or environmentally friendly fake imaging.

An Apple spokesperson said that the court's decision "generally supports our strict approach to carbon neutrality," but declined to provide further comment on possible appeals. In June 2025, Apple had considered that this lawsuit was at risk of "constraining credible corporate climate actions that the world desperately needed."

However, the company acknowledged it would stop using the carbon neutral' label on Apple Watch from September 2026 to adjust to more stringent EU regulations regarding such terms.

Apple previously based its carbon-neutral claims on a reforestation project in Paraguay, where the company leases land to plant eucalyptus trees. The project aims to absorb emissions by creating plantation forests. However, this effort has drawn criticism from ecologists.

Eucalyptus monoculture is said to be dangerous for biodiversity and requires large amounts of water consumption, so it is dubbed the green teacher. The Frankfurt Court also found that 75% of the land Apple uses only has a lease contract until 2029, without long-term extension guarantees.

"There is no safe future for the continuation of the forest project," reads the court's official statement.

Apple is not the only technology company that relies on similar projects. Meta and Microsoft are also known to invest in reforestation projects in Latin America in order to obtain carbon credit.

The Deutsche Umwelthilfe (DUH) environmental group that sued Apple welcomes this ruling as a big win against greenwashing.

"Co2 storage in commercial eucalyptus plantations is only limited to a few years, contractual guarantees for the future are inadequate, and ecological integrity of monocultural areas is not guaranteed at all," Juergen Resch, the leader of the DUH, said in a statement.

With this decision, Apple is facing greater pressure to revisit its environmental and public communication strategies, while debates over the effectiveness of reforestation projects as climate solutions are increasingly emerging in Europe.