“There Greenpeace goes again,” Arik Hesseldahl writes for BusinessWeek. “First it was the Mac. Now it’s the iPhone. I’ve harrumphed before, in this column and in my blog, about Greenpeace’s flawed attacks on Apple for using certain toxic chemicals in its computers. And now I’m ready to harrumph anew.”
“It’s not that Apple’s environmental conscience should be entirely clean. The company is in no better shape than other major computer makers when it comes to the use of these chemicals. Yet while it’s not an excuse, Apple sells just a fraction of the number of computers sold by Dell and Hewlett-Packard, both of which draw less consistent ire from Greenpeace,” Hesseldahl writes.
“It’s clear why Greenpeace picks on Apple so incessantly: The unique place that Apple and its chief executive officer, Steve Jobs occupy within popular culture and the technology industry make them both convenient whipping boys for publicity-hungry environmental organizations. Calling out Apple over environmental issues simply gets more headlines than criticizing HP would,” Hesseldahl writes.
“And Apple makes an especially juicy target when you consider that its branding and identity tend to overlap with so many cultural touchstones that the modern, left-leaning consumer is likely to consider important. Demographically speaking, Mac users are more likely to care about global warming, deforestation, and other environmental issues than your average Windows user. They’re also more likely to respond to one of Greenpeace’s calls to write letters, send e-mail, and show up at shareholder meetings to lobby for whatever the organization is up in arms about at any given moment. And having Al Gore, a freshly-minted Nobel laureate, on its board of directors also sends a strong message about how Apple wants to be perceived on the environmental front,” Hesseldahl writes.
Much more in the full article here.
