Eduitor’s Note: So, as Chelsea noted the other day, Apple decided this week that it no longer meshed with the eco-label EPEAT. As a response, San Francisco told Apple it was out (city officials wouldn’t be buying its products). And, now, due to that or the media pressure or consumer dissatisfaction with this change (or all of the above), Apple is changing its mind and sticking with EPEAT. Here’s more from Scott Cooney of sister site The Inspired Economist:
Apple today announced that it might have been just kidding when it previously announced plans to withdraw its Macbook from evaluation by the green IT label EPEAT. Apple’s popularity among designers, artists, and young entrepreneurs might give you the impression that its products are, as the company says, “the world’s greenest lineup of notebooks.” The truth is a bit more complicated than that, of course, with Apple fairly consistently ranking among the middle of the pack in IT greenness.
Apple’s been getting skewered by the public and the media for pulling its Macbook out of the EPEAT certification process. EPEAT is the premier certification for IT products, and an EPEAT certification on your computer means that the product has achieved energy efficiency, product recyclability, low-toxicity, and other standards measuring its environmentally friendly nature. It also comes with a fairly substantial carrot. The Federal Government, starting in 2009 with an Executive Order by President Obama, committed to buying 95% of its computing equipment as EPEAT certified, as a way to save taxpayers money by avoiding energy hogs.
The image Apple would love people to have of its impact on the environment and public health…
It’s not the energy efficiency, per se, that Apple had rejected by pulling out of EPEAT, but the standards for repair and recyclability that EPEAT also governs. The company was hoping to release new products that are sleeker and sexier, but unfortunately, that also means that you’d need some specialized tools and expertise to get the products apart in order to repair something broken, and of course recycling becomes far more difficult, meaning that toxins in the electronics would be far more likely to end up as soil, groundwater, or air pollution.
In a letter posted on the company’s website, Senior Vice President Bob Mansfield said today:
“We’ve recently heard from many loyal Apple customers who were disappointed to learn that we had removed our products from the EPEAT rating system. I recognize that this was a mistake. Starting today, all eligible Apple products are back on EPEAT.”
Follow Scott Cooney on twitter, or join our newsletter in the right hand column, for more from Inspired Economist.
Image Credit: Apple girl via Shutterstock
I don't like paywalls. You don't like paywalls. Who likes paywalls? Here at CleanTechnica, we implemented a limited paywall for a while, but it always felt wrong — and it was always tough to decide what we should put behind there. In theory, your most exclusive and best content goes behind a paywall. But then fewer people read it! We just don't like paywalls, and so we've decided to ditch ours. Unfortunately, the media business is still a tough, cut-throat business with tiny margins. It's a never-ending Olympic challenge to stay above water or even perhaps — gasp — grow. So ...
Sign up for daily news updates from CleanTechnica on email. Or follow us on Google News!
Have a tip for CleanTechnica, want to advertise, or want to suggest a guest for our CleanTech Talk podcast? Contact us here.
