Apple, Inc. has taken a great deal of heat over the past year for its environmental policies. Greenpeace, with their ‘Green My Apple’ campaign was the most vocal in its frustration with the Macintosh’s poor environmental track record, targeting the computers for their use of “hazardous substances that other companies have abandoned”.
Computers have long presented problems in terms of the chemicals they require and the energy they consume. Among the issues that challenge computer manufacturers today are the following:
- Toxins (i.e. mercury and arsenic) in LCD screens
- Use of polyvinyl chloride (PVC) and brominated flame retardants (BFRs)
- Improved energy conservation
The fantastic eco-blog, EcoSpace, provides a great explanation on how Apple has addressed these environmental issues. However, it is important to point out how Apple’s machines may not have been the ecological scourge that they were painted to be. I’m not expert enough to argue the point with Greenpeace, so I will let an article by Mary E. Tyler on arstechnica.com do it for me.
Ms. Tyler displays the scores given to Apple’s computers by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), using their “Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool” which rates computers on 23 required and 28 optional criteria. As Ms. Tyler points out, all of Apple’s computers score well in comparison to those offered by other manufacturers on criteria such as the amounts of toxins used in monitors and batteries, the use of post-consumer recycled plastic, adoption of ENERGY STAR® specifications, and even corporate policies. This high score came before the launch of the new Macbook Air a machine identified by EcoSpace to adopt almost all the changes required to truly ‘green’ a personal computer.
How other manufacturers are doing is another story and one harder to evaluate due to the lack of publicity surrounding the policies of other computer makers. Dell and HP, for example, offer environmental policy statements that are long on good intentions but very short on specific details. Users and developers have come up with unique ways to improve how PCs affect the environment. One of the most unique of these is the Green PC project which uses software to share a single computer among as many as ten users simultaneously. Prominent on Green PCs website is its claim that switching just 1% of the world’s personal computers to its DiscoverStation software is “equal to taking 26 million cars off the road”. And, that statistic is even documented right on the home page.
The manufacture of all electronics uses such hazardous materials that it is reasonable to believe that even the best manufacturers could, in theory, do a whole lot better. Targeting Apple was a brilliant way for Greenpeace to ride the coattails of the computer manufacturer’s recent successes to make their quite valid point. Whether this campaign pushed Apple to adopt more eco-friendly policies is debatable. What remains to be seen is whether other manufacturers will make specific changes to improve their own environmental records or whether some of the more unique solutions like Green PC will be what addresses our computers’ ecological impact.