Triplesourced
Reporting, musing and not to mention some random scribbling on tech issues from green/sustainable IT to security. (http://adonoghue.wordpress.com/)
Thursday 5 April 2007, 10:43 AM
Apple defends green rep
Conventional is wisdom wrong again it seems. Steve Jobs' outfit aren't taking it lying down however and when I contacted them again to find out what their response to being the eco-dunces of the class are – they pinged me a link to a Business Week article . from last month that goes some way to defend the company that encourages us all to Think Different:
…"if you're evaluating an Apple purchase versus another computer product based on the haranguing that Apple is receiving from Greenpeace, don't be fooled. Apple's no more or less evil than any other computer manufacturer. And while it's one thing to call attention to a problem that an entire industry needs to address, Greenpeace's methodologies, in this particular case, don't paint an accurate picture.
There's a right way and wrong way to respond to these concerns, and the wrong way would to be cave in to rhetorical bullying by a political action group that's well-known for creating drama where there is none."
PreviousComments on this post
While it is amusing to see Apple take a kicking and to consider the consternation on the faces of the hemp wearing, sandal toed "creatives" that make up such a large part of their market I tend to favour Apple on this one.
Environmental pressure groups have a bad record on long term protection of the environment. The introduction of the catalytic convertor saw the disbandonment of the drive to more efficient (less polluting) lean burn engine technology. To top it all the convertors actually don't work effectively for most journeys in Northern Europe.
There was also Greenpeace's debacle over the disposal of the Brent Spar storage facility. They kicked up such a furore over the original (and environmentally best) solution that Shell were forced to tow the thing to a Norwegian Ffjord for dismantling - a far more risky procedure. The next year Greenpeace were forced to apologise for their misleading campaign.
Even Paul Thurrott's testing on his two machines turned up some interesting "figures":
ThinkPad (running, idle): 33 watts
ThinkPad (sleep): 22 watts
MacBook (running, idle): 21 watts
MacBook (sleep): 2 watts
So the think pad (made by the most green company) is MUCH worse on power consumption than the MacBook made by the WORST.
"the hemp wearing, sandal toed "creatives" that make up such a large part of [Apple's] market"
Wow! Is that what a lot of Mac users wear in northern Europe? I'm afraid I don't see that kind of attire pattern among Mac users in the US--mostly "regular" middle class people, small businesses, etc.
But as far as the topic is concerned: from what I've read, Greenpeace's method of determining a company's greenness was improperly weighted towards what the company said they were going to do, and not enough on what the company was actually doing. And they didn't do a lot of in-depth research on what these companies had already done.
