Triplesourced
Reporting, musing and not to mention some random scribbling on tech issues from green/sustainable IT to security. (http://adonoghue.wordpress.com/)
Monday 15 October 2007, 8:53 PM
Greenpeace says iPhone ain't green
Greenpeace on the other hand, don't seem to have bought into the famous Jobs reality distortion field. No doubt Apple fans will argue that, any product subject to this much scrutiny will have flaws - which is true - but Apple claim to be striving to be different - and being absolutely whiter than white - when it comes to recycling and the environment should be part of that surely.
Grreenpeace write:
In May, after thousands of you had participated in our Green my Apple campaign,Steve Jobs the boss of Apple claimed: "Apple is ahead of, or will soon be ahead of, most of its competitors" on environmental issues.
We watched closely when the iPhone was launched in June for any mention of the green features of the phone from Apple. There was none.
So we bought a new iPhone in June and sent it our research laboratories in the UK. Analysis revealed that the iPhone contains toxic brominated compounds (indicating the prescence of brominated flame retardants (BFRs)) and hazardous PVC. The findings are detailed in the report, "Missed call: the iPhone's hazardous chemicals"
You can find the whole report here - together with some funky YouTube videos:
http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/news/iphone-s-hazardous-chemicals
PreviousComments on this post
As Apple has said, it complies with all the regulations and has committed to phase out PVC and BFRs by the end of 2008.
It's perfectly in order to say that this isn't good enough, but Greenpeace isn't just saying that -- it's saying that it's revealed some hitherto unknown behaviour that's particularly damning.
While this makes good copy, it doesn't exactly match reality. Whether the irony of Apple being hit by a reality distortion field compensates for the showmanship of the 'revelation', I'll leave to others to decide: this affair doesn't improve my impression of Greenpeace as a reliable, objective source of information.
And reliable, objective sources of information are what are most important in environmentalism. I think Greenpeace has damaged itself here.
Unfortunately Greenpeace gun for Apple because they know they get hits. It really is Fear, Uncertainty Doubt. Interesting that this press release happened a week before the earnings report - it was timed so perfectly to try and price down the stock before Apple report earnings next week. As it stands it looks like this particular attack has failed.
Problem with Greenpeace is that they spend more time on publicly bashing the companies that don't pay them than they do in actually doing any real work.
The Apple bashing at the beginning of the year was because Apple hadn't actually SAID what they were doing environmentally. Whereas other companies said what they were planning to do publicly BUT carried on regardless with their current practices.
