Fri, 25 Sep 2009 Everything's Gone Green: Apple updates environmental website

Apple has introduced a new look website focused on the company's green credentials.

The company also reveals its annual corporate carbon emissions for the first time.

Apple execs say that consumers' use of Apple products accounts for 53 per cent of the company's total 10.2 million tons of carbon emissions annually. That's more than the 38 per cent that occurs as the products are manufactured in Asia or the 3 per cent that comes from Apple's own operations reports Business Week.

"A lot of companies publish how green their building is, but it doesn't matter if you're shipping millions of power-hungry products with toxic chemicals in them," Apple's CEO Steve Jobs said in a rare interview with the magazine. "It's like asking a cigarette company how green their office is."

One environmental highlight, Apple points out on the new site, is that the 30 per cent improvement in energy efficiency in the recent 20 inch iMac, introduced in March, will reduce carbon emissions enough - over four years - to offset all the emissions from Apple's facilities worldwide for a year. That's a real reduction in emissions, brought about by engineering and innovation insists Apple.

The site includes information on life cycle impact, product usage impact, reports and news including recent analysis of greenhouse gas emissions.

Apple has also been highlighting a reduction in packaging. The company has reduced MacBook Pro packaging by 40 per cent since 2006, meaning 50 per cent more products can be shipped in each airline shipping container, the equivalent of using one less jumbo jet for every 32,000 units shipped.



"These reports help educate our consumers about how Apple products affect their own environmental footprint and track out progress to reducing greenhouse gas emissions with each new product," Apple said.

Apple is also encouraging suppliers to get rid of bromine and chlorine, the harmful ingredients in PVCs and BFRs.

In July this year, despite earlier attacks on Apple, Greenpeace praised the company for its new line of products being "virtually" free of PVC and BFRs, including PCs like MacBooks. It also lauded Apple for its efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and recycling efforts.

However, Apple was still criticised for not providing a timeline on removing chemicals from certain products, like arsenic from display glass.

While Steve Jobs admitted to Business Week, Greenpeace and others had motivated Apple to improve its environmental efforts, he hit out at the pressure groups methods and requests for timelines which might lead to simply making hollow promises.

"I thought Greenpeace was being very unfair with us at the beginning, and that they were using us to get visibility. To have people saying we didn't care and that we were callous in this area was very painful and untrue," Jobs insisted.

More information on Apple's environmental efforts can be found at www.apple.com/environment.

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