Apple Computers: Fun for You, Toxic for the Environment

By Jess Hemerly, AlterNet. Posted January 30, 2007.

Before an audience of tech lovers, developers, and Mac enthusiasts, Steve Jobs unveiled the creation everyone has been speculating about for years: the iPhone. Fans hung on every word as the Apple CEO stood onstage during his keynote address at the Macworld Expo in San Francisco. Dressed in a black mock turtleneck, he told the rapt crowd about patents for polymers, innovative user interfaces and corporate partnerships.

Jobs went on for nearly two hours about how amazing and revolutionary his gadget will be. But he did not mention the company's environmental policy once.

Then again, who talks about environmental policy at an electronics fair? Michael Dell does. At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas during the second week of January, the head of struggling Dell Computers raised the stakes for the entire PC industry: "I challenge every PC maker to join us in providing free recycling for every customer in every country ... all the time -- no exceptions," he said.

Jobs and the PR wizards at Apple have done a fantastic job of positioning the company as the technological haven for the hip, the progressive and the revolutionary. But when it comes to the environment, Apple is out of touch.

In December of 2006, Greenpeace released a report ranking the overall environmental policy of major technology companies. Dell was at the top but Apple found itself at the bottom. While top companies like Dell and Nokia have made great strides to eliminate the most toxic chemicals from their products and offer strong recycling programs, Apple has not.

"Today you can't recycle most of these products because you're recycling toxic waste," says Rick Hind, legislative director of the Greenpeace Toxic Campaign. "We're looking at it from a complete life cycle approach, from where we make these to where they end up. Twenty to 50 million tons of e-waste a year end up in China; that [e-waste] is endangering to migrant families trying to remove a very small percentage of the materials for recycling."

Following the release of the report, Greenpeace launched "GreenMyApple," a full-force PR campaign complete with an informational website that impressively mimics Apple's website. Activists distributed flyers outside of the Moscone Center during the full week of Macworld Expo. The group also altered the video of the famous Steve Jobs keynote address, creating their fantasy version of the keynote in which Jobs would announce that Apple plans not only to step up their environmental policies but will make environmental responsibility a part of the company's identity.

To date, Apple has done only what is legally required. They are in compliance with RoHS standards ("the restriction of the use of certain hazardous substances in electrical and electronic equipment"), which were put in place in the European Union in July 2006. Pressure from environmental groups like the Computer Take Back Campaign combined with changing legal standards forced Apple to come up with a recycling program that at least looked like it was green -- but that's about it.

Apple refuses to make "green" part of their image. Just finding the environmental section on its website requires either a search of the site or knowing that "apple.com/environment" will get you there. Among all of the tabs in the navigation bar at the top of the pages, "Environment" is nowhere to be found. "As their website shows, green can be turned into greenwash," says Hind. "What we're talking about is measuring them based on toxics and recycling that is a serious physical problem."

Apple spokesperson Kristin Huguet provided the official Apple response to the Greenpeace ranking and campaign: "We disagree with Greenpeace's rating and the criteria they chose. Apple has a strong environmental track record and has led the industry in restricting and banning toxic substances such as mercury, cadmium, hexavelent chromium, as well as many brominated flame retardants. We have also completely eliminated CRT monitors, which contain lead, from our product line. Apple desktops, notebooks, and displays, each score best in class in the new EPA ranking system EPEAT, which uses new international standards set by IEEE."

Apple contends that it is as green as it needs to be and supports that contention with the Silver medal it earned from the EPA's U.S. Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool (EPEAT) back in July of 2006. But the sets of criteria used by Greenpeace and the EPA are very different.

For one, the EPA criteria apply to specific products and apply only to stateside programs. Greenpeace's criteria evaluate the company as a whole and are more critical. In a Jan. 12 article on IT Week's Green Business News, Scot Case, marketing director at EPEAT, said, "My initial reaction was that comparing the two systems was like comparing apples and oranges, but on closer inspection it is more like comparing apples and cows."

See more stories tagged with: environment, environmental policy, apple, mac, computers, dell, nokia, toxics, electronics

Jess Hemerly is an editor at MacTribe and a contributing writer at Chord.

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