Sinds Tim Cook de CEO van Apple is geworden waait er duidelijk een nieuwe wind door het bedrijf, want waar het vroeger een gesloten bastion was staat het nu juist vooraan in openheid op veel fronten. Zo heeft het bedrijf vlak voor het weekend het Supplier Responsibility Progress Report gepubliceerd, dat we hier kunnen lezen (PDF, 7 MB).

Daarbij vroegen wij ons trouwens meteen af of er andere grote tech-bedrijven zijn die zo'n gedetailleerde rapportage naar buiten brengen over hun doen en laten op dit gebied, wij zouden er zo snel geen voorbeeld van weten.

Als je die PDF liever niet naar binnen wilt halen, een groot gedeelte van de informatie daaruit is ook te vinden op deze pagina van Apple, waar we ook meteen een aantal mooie animaties in HTML5 voorbij zagen komen.

Hieronder op een rij wat wij de belangrijkste punten uit het rapport vonden:

• We launched the Apple Supplier Environment, Health, and Safety (EHS) Academy, an 18-month curriculum aimed at raising the level of EHS expertise in our supply chain. In 2013, over 240 factory personnel representing more than 270,000 workers enrolled in this program.
  
• We started a project to drive accountability for the vocational schools that place student interns in our supplier facilities.
  
• We drove our suppliers to achieve an average of 95 percent compliance with our standard maximum 60-hour workweek. We tracked more than 1 million workers weekly in this program.
  
• We confirmed in January 2014 that all active, identified tantalum smelters in our supply chain were verified as conflict-free by third-party auditors.
  
• We released a list of the smelters and refiners whose tin, tantalum, tungsten, and gold we use so it’s clear which ones have been verified as conflict-free and which ones still need independent verification.
  
• We launched a pilot of our Clean Water Program with 13 supplier sites who collectively use more than 41 million cubic meters of water per year with a goal to reuse a significant amount of treated process wastewater and recycle water within the production process.
  
• We continued to seek out abuses of migrant workers by conducting 33 audits specific to this topic, including 16 factories not previously audited. We required suppliers to reimburse these foreign contract workers US$3.9 million in excessive fees paid to labor brokers, bringing our total reimbursements since 2008 to US$16.9 million.
  
• We have driven our suppliers to train more than 3.8 million workers on their rights since 2008 including over 1.5 million in 2013 alone.
  
• We conducted 451 audits at all levels of our supply chain a 51 percent increase from 298 audits in 2012 in facilities where nearly 1.5 million workers make Apple products.
  
• We strengthened our Supplier Code of Conduct and publicly released our Supplier Responsibility Standards a document with more than 100 pages outlining Apple’s detailed expectations on labor and human rights, ethics, health and safety, and environment
  
• Trained 1.5 million workers on their rights in 2013 and over 3.8 million since 2007.
  
• Doubled the Supplier Employee Education and Development (SEED) program from 9 to 18 sites.
  
• Provided free courses to more workers through SEED with over 280,000 participants in 2013.