Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Apple Corporate, Other Events, MacBook
Apple products announced today: It's easier being green
Apple made a concerted effort today to highlight the reduced impact its new products have on the environment.
This effort all started with Steve Jobs' open letter in 2007, A Greener Apple, announcing a long-term plan to "protect the environment and make our business more sustainable." The letter was released partly in response to a Greenpeace campaign, encouraging Apple to reduce the amount of toxic chemicals in its products and improve its recycling programs.
Today, the star of the show was Apple's new "unibody," a single, complex chassis for new MacBook and MacBook Pro units fabricated from a single brick of aluminum. In a video posted on its website, Apple noted that as a result of the new fabrication process, fewer parts in the laptop means a reduction in weight, size, and the amount of other material necessary to hold the device together.
Put together with reductions in packaging size, the shipping and stocking process becomes more efficient. Smaller shipping cartons mean more cartons per palette, which means more units per shipment. This reduces the per-unit cost of shipment in both dollars and carbon.
New MacBooks are not only Energy Star certified, but received a gold rating from the Electronic Product Environmental Assesment Tool (or EPEAT). Apple joins 37 other laptops with gold EPEAT ratings from Toshiba, Dell, HP, Lenovo, and others.
As we all know from saving up our soda cans, aluminum is highly recyclable, along with many of the other parts in Apple's new notebooks. According to Apple, they recycle 28 percent of their products sold.The new aluminum unibody is no exception.
All this points to a smaller carbon footprint for our favorite fruit company. Apple hasn't specified how much smaller its carbon footprint is, in aggregate, instead releasing information on a product-by-product basis. Apple's environmental reports cover many of its products, facilities, and suppliers.
Add this to small steps like using tapioca for its packing materials, and avoiding more mailings like this one, and Apple will be leading us and other computer manufacturers to a greener future.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
required said 5:25PM on 10-14-2008
Must make all the exhaustpipehuggers mad.
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a ham sandwich said 5:36PM on 10-14-2008
nice!
yeah i got invested in some kinda fruit company or somethin. and now i don't have to worry about money no more. thats good! one less thing!
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brian said 6:18PM on 10-14-2008
If Apple REALLY cared about the environment they'd make more standalone computers and not push the iMac so much. The Mac mini hasn't been revised in over a year and there could EASILY be one, if not two, models between the Mini and the Mac Pro. Looking at my own purchasing history, each display I've owned has lasted through at least 2 computers.
Also, all Dell LCD monitors (except for the 30") have multiple inputs. The base models have VGA and DVI, the nicer ones have component, composite, and/or S-video. My 24" Dell LCD at home is connected to my Mac Pro, my Mini, and my TiVo. My old 20" is now being used as a TV. So I need less monitors in the first place and they can be reused in many ways down the road. No sense mentioning the Dell monitors cost quite a bit less in the first place, and use standard connectors, unlike Apple, going from ADC (boo!) to DVI (yea!) to this stupid new micro plug (boo!)
The move to LED, aluminum, and glass is good, but doesn't offset everything else. I'm typing this at work, sitting in front of the same 20" Dell LCD I've had for 5 years and 2 computers (G4 & G5, and hopefully a Mac Pro soon. By the way, my company owns HUNDREDS of 20" Dell LCDs purchased over the last five+ years and they're lasting GREAT.)
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Tim said 8:21PM on 10-14-2008
I have to say, Apple actually seems really committed to the environment. At first, when Jobs was talking about switching to LED screens and stuff like that, I thought it was just greenwashing, and that he'd switch to LED even if they were worse because LEDs simply look better. However, it really does look like they're trying to cut out the toxins. I'm wondering how much of a markup is lost for the computer when picking out these safer components? Between the nicer OS, high quality build, and the Earth-friendly design, Apple could actually be a better deal than people make it out to be.
Of course, I think Macs are worth it because I'm on a fan page and writing this on a MacBook Pro!
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KarlW said 1:09AM on 10-15-2008
Steve is a vegan, and as a CEO of an international electronics manufacturer, he has a lot of responsibility. I don't doubt that he feels strongly about the environment.
He's also had quite a life-changing experience battling pancreatic cancer. I wouldn't be surprised that he wanted to do some good. Things like that tend to refocus your view.
Oh, and Al Gore is on the board. That probably helps.
Jon said 10:55AM on 10-15-2008
While I respect these efforts because we don't need this junk in our rivers and water table... I think people have a distorted view of what "protecting the environment is." Hunters and fisherman still "donate" more money to the preservation of habitats and wildlife population control than any other group via licenses and permits and I think are the only group that truly understands what protecting the environment means.
We have failed in these efforts in california and alaska. Humans have upset the food supply chain in alaska, but people don't want to reduce the predator population to keep wildlife populations in balance. In california, "environmental" regulations prevent proper cutting to prevent massive forest fires. Energy regulations prevent the development of methods to cleanly exploit plentiful domestic resources (coal, natural gas, nuclear).
So, yay for apple, but I think more people need to open their eyes and look at crux of our environmental responsibility.
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