At CES 2025, Silence on Sustainability as Climate Change Disasters Rage

Every January, CES is meant to be a showcase of the tech trends that will shape the coming year. While the annual tech trade show is known for its pie-in-the-sky futuristic concepts — from rollable screens to flying vehicles — this year’s show felt particularly out of touch. Whereas CES 2024’s techno-futuristic forecasting was balanced by progressive promises for sustainability initiatives from a number of big companies, CES 2025 was remarkably quiet on efforts to preserve the planet. 

While the year’s biggest tech show promoted $7,000 coffee makers, humanoid robots and eye-popping TVs, wildfires ripped through the northern and western edges of one of the world’s most populous cities — and the one I live in. As we learned about the future of technology against the backdrop of flashy casino lights and elaborate cocktail parties, over 10,000 homes burned to ash in Los Angeles, as people in my city lost everything from their present and their past. 

Catastrophic weather events aside, the tech industry isn’t exactly known for being sustainable. The smartphones I write excitedly about are made of rare earth elements mined in deplorable conditions by modern-day slaves, as NPR has reported. Well over a decade after the first news broke of suicides occurring in the Foxconn facilities in China where iPhones are made, reports continue to emerge on the brutal conditions of assembly lines for today’s devices. A 2023 report from Rest of World details manufacturing realities for iPhones in Zhengzhou, China, for example, and a story from Hankyoreh last year sheds light on women workers who went on strike after mangling their fingers on the Samsung phone production lines in the Giheung district of Yongin, South Korea. 

But I’m newly despondent that even the modicum of sustainability on show at last year’s CES 2024 was significantly downplayed. Sustainability has never been the sexiest topic, with companies frequently tucking their eco-commitments into the closing moments of their presentations. But even being mentioned in a keynote at all indicates a prioritization, an importance in the corporate plan. For a trade show about the future, CES lacked major advancements meant to help the world grapple with the increasingly bleak climate realities of the present. 

Why aren’t the top names in Big Tech using their CES stage time to show how they’re helping solve the crisis of our age? At best, Samsung’s keynote made a passing mention of increasing office energy efficiency using its modular (and vaguely detailed) Future Space Platform, as well as youth leadership programs and a fundraising partnership with the United Nations Development Program. Though well-intentioned, the benefits of these programs likely won’t be evident for years and don’t do much to address what’s happening now: fires, hurricanes and floods that devastate homes and upend lives for years. 

It’s a sharp dropoff from last year’s CES, where big tech companies and even the Consumer Technology Association itself (which puts on CES) pledged to increase the use of recycled materials in products. The CTA led Lenovo, LG, Panasonic, Samsung and Sony in signing up for the Consumer Technology Circularity Initiative to make their own individual pledges, though we haven’t heard anything from this group endeavor since. Dell and Razer had their own announcements about using more recycled materials in products, while Google chose the moment to voice support for the Right to Repair movement.

It’s all the stranger to hear silence in 2025, because Big Tech has trumpeted its sustainability initiatives for years, with Samsung making announcements about reusing ocean plastic in its phones and earbuds as well as a previous pledge to pack recycled materials in its TVs by 2025, among other initiatives. Samsung was among the first to use recycled materials in packaging for products and, for better or worse, swiftly followed Apple in leaving charger bricks out of the boxes for its new devices. The latter was a controversial measure that may reduce the glut of power bricks gathering dust in consumer households, but also arguably benefits the companies making these devices since it saves on costs. 

Apple recorded a skit for its iPhone 15 launch wherein CEO Tim Cook won over Mother Nature with the company’s environmental friendliness metrics, including reducing emissions across its supply chain and sourcing materials more sustainably. Apple has committed to decarbonizing its supply chain by 2030 and pushing its suppliers to use clean energy, while Samsung aims to achieve carbon neutrality and 100% renewable energy by 2050. 

Read more: How Green Is Apple? A Closer Look at the iPhone-Maker’s Sustainability Credentials

Those sustainability efforts are encouraging, but don’t do much to help people actively suffering from disasters exacerbated by climate change. Decarbonizing by the middle of the century will likely be cold comfort for those whose homes will be destroyed in the next decade of a worsening climate. 

The most promising sustainability announcements at CES came from carmakers and startups rather than Big Tech. They include a solar panel-wrapped electric vehicle, mainstream Honda EVs, plug-and-play solar panels and paper batteries. Smaller companies are recognizing the opportunity to provide consumers with products that, ideally, will have a lower emissions impact on a continually warming world.

As the focus on sustainability in Big Tech’s CES keynotes seems to wane, there’s even more emphasis on robots and AI. While I’m not immune to the charms of small robots, especially ones that are meant to assist disabled owners, seeing so much emphasis on AI while my city burns in a wildfire is a sobering experience.

A ChatGPT prompt uses 10 times the electricity of a Google Search, a recent International Energy Agency report stated. By 2027, global AI demand could drain up to 6.6 billion cubic meters of water — half the annual water usage of the UK — according to an October 2023 academic paper. It would have been nice to hear more about how tech companies are planning to offset that power consumption as AI becomes a bigger part of our future. 

CES, once known as the Consumer Electronics Show, is meant to showcase the products that will enter our homes and lives in the months and years to come. But the emphasis on “consumer” has led Big Tech to prioritize making devices suited to today’s world rather than innovate for the worsening world we’re all suffering through.

It’s hard to imagine those made homeless by the Los Angeles wildfires getting excited about a domestic robot like Samsung’s Ballie, but they’d surely be more interested in devices with early warning systems. For all of us in Southern California, the nonprofit-backed Watch Duty app has been a saving grace of information. Likewise, those living in the southeastern US devastated by last year’s Hurricane Helene probably aren’t hyped by more AI solutions, unless it’s helping them prepare for and survive the next climate-worsened calamity.

It would be nice to see some of this AI focus turn to improving tools that help in disasters, like emergency SOS and satellite messaging features rather than plugged into robots nobody buys. The one device shown off at CES 2025 that could’ve helped people in the Los Angeles wildfires was the HMD OffGrid, a handheld accessory that links your smartphone up to satellite service to text and summon emergency assistance. Anyone stuck in a blaze that also knocked out local cell towers could potentially use the OffGrid to contact emergency responders for rescue as well as reach out to family in frantic moments.

Looking at the whiz-bang wonders at CES 2025, I can’t help but wonder how much longer Big Tech can ignore climate change. As consumerism continues its avaricious cycle of piling new products in front of a populace trained to look for solutions it can buy, I’m baffled that supposedly innovative companies haven’t at least pivoted some of their new product lineups to address climate-worsened disasters that are coming with more frequency. 

As the fires raged tens of miles north of me, it felt like I was helping my colleagues cover a trade show on a different planet, not one a state away.