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How green is the apple?
- by brett watts -

Theres no doubt about it, Apple is one of the largest and most successful companies in the world today. It claims to be one of the greenest but is this true or simply a clever marketing tactic?

Lets take a look at the pros of Apples efforts to be a greener company. Here are my top 3 pat on the backs for Apple.

1. Responsible Manufacturing
2. The Apple Recycle Program
3. Efforts for Energy Efficiency

Now is there business opportunity in these green solutions?

1. Responsible Manufacturing
   

Responsible Manufacturing is not really that brilliant of an idea. Make a smaller product that uses less stuff and we will have to buy less stuff. So your wondering why this is number one? Well actually rather than being about cutting down stuff its more about what stuff your counting back. Below is a image from the apple site.

So you can see the improvements and how they cut materials and cost. Theres nothing wrong with this infact many more companies should be smart enough to adapt the same idea. Below this image is a list of substances banned from Apple products. You get the idea from that. Theres some nasty stuff in there and it simply is not removed by chance. Apple is clearly making a effort to be greener.

Substances banned from products

• Asbestos
• Cadmium (Cd)
• Hexavalent Chromium (CrVI)
• Mercury (Hg), except for backlight lamps
• Lead (Pb), above and beyond RoHS requirements
• Organic Tin
• Polybrominated biphenyls (PBBs)
• Polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs)
• Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs)
• Polychlorinated dibenzodioxins (PCDDs)
• Polychlorinated napthalene (PCNs)
• Polychlorinated terphenyls (PCTs)
• Short-chain chlorinated paraffins (SCCPs)

What you didn't know is...since 2004 GreenPeace has attacked Apple for not setting a timeline to remove PVC and BFR, which still exist in recent products such as the iPod Nano and MacBook; However after some research I found that PVC can still be found in things such as children's toys which I feel is bigger issue.

2. The Apple Recycle Program

Who doesn't know someone with a old computer or cell phone sitting around? These are usually all thrown out and disposed incorrectly and since its usually older technology they have more harmful chemicals in them. So apple does it for free and I'm sure they recycle whatever they can get out of each and everything brought into them to help save the cost buying or making the part. Its recycling, good work.

3. Efforts for Energy Efficiency

This is idea is nothing special. People want their laptop battery to be able to last 3 hrs longer then their previous one. How does Apple meet your demands? Well simply being more engery efficient. The iMac from which I am typing on came with a automatic sleep timers and etc. setup for very short amounts of time. My Dell downstairs did not. This doesn't mean it can be done on the dell your just forced to do it on the mac. Good idea but nothing original, you guys changed the default settings.

Now for the point of this article....

The above image is of the latest Apple iPod family. This is a family of 4. That use to be 3. That was once 2, and before that 1.

The iPod classic is the 6th generation iPod (they don't count the iPod Photo or it would be 8). The point is how can a company that supports mass consumption of its products call itself green? If a company tries to get its costumers to get a new mp3 player every year and new computer every 2, how is that helping th enviorment ?

Heres my 0gb iPod

It works fine. And has been for the past 7-8 years.

Now if everyone stuck to a cd play 119,000,000 iPods would not have been produced. Im guess that would have helped the enviorment a lot more then removing Organic Tin from your products. Why does my iMac come with 44 movie trailers? Why do the new iPods communicate with Starbucks? My question for you readers of my blog is this,

Is it possible for a company to support mass consumption and remain environmentally friendly and Is it possible for a Company to survive without supporting mass consumption of it products?

i ll post my opinion in my next blog, until then thanks for read

-brett

update: those with the argument that downloading music is better for the enviorment then buying cds
1. your computer, the sever, and your ipod still use electricity which still causes pollution
2. music downloading has caused a increase in CD purchases