Apple CEO Steve Jobs has posted another open letter on the company’s website, this time focusing on Apple and the environment. The letter is titled, “A Greener Apple” and begins:
Apple has been criticized by some environmental organizations for not being a leader in removing toxic chemicals from its new products, and for not aggressively or properly recycling its old products. Upon investigating Apple’s current practices and progress towards these goals, I was surprised to learn that in many cases Apple is ahead of, or will soon be ahead of, most of its competitors in these areas. Whatever other improvements we need to make, it is certainly clear that we have failed to communicate the things that we are doing well.
It is generally not Apple’s policy to trumpet our plans for the future; we tend to talk about the things we have just accomplished. Unfortunately this policy has left our customers, shareholders, employees and the industry in the dark about Apple’s desires and plans to become greener. Our stakeholders deserve and expect more from us, and they’re right to do so. They want us to be a leader in this area, just as we are in the other areas of our business. So today we’re changing our policy.
Now I’d like to tell you what we are doing to remove toxic chemicals from our new products, and to more aggressively recycle our old products.
Included in the full text is the paragraph, “To eliminate mercury in our displays, we need to transition from fluorescent lamps to light-emitting diodes (LEDs) to illuminate the displays. Fortunately, all iPod displays already use LEDs for illumination, and therefore contain no mercury. We plan to introduce our first Macs with LED backlight technology in 2007.” [Bold emphasis added by MacDailyNews.]
Read Jobs’ letter in full here: http://www.apple.com/hotnews/agreenerapple/
MacDailyNews Take: May open letters from Steve Jobs become a regular occurrence.
As we’ve repeatedly written regarding this issue: We’re all for a cleaner environment, but Apple ought to charge Greenpeace a PR fee. Mostly, Apple is guilty of being a very a popular brand name which these militant “environmentalists” use to generate free publicity.
Apple doesn’t sell dirty CRT monitors, like certain cheapo Windows-centric PC box assemblers. Apple uses rechargeable batteries in iPods, instead of having tens of millions of users constantly tossing AA batteries into landfills. Apple even offers purchasers of Apple Macs and Apple monitors free recycling of their old computer and monitor — regardless of manufacturer. The list goes on.
Information on Apple’s recycling programs and industry-leading environmental policies is available online at http://www.apple.com/environment
It is obvious that you are ignorant of the obvious, the terms “anonymity” and “pseudonym”, and the exercise of literary license. I also add that you seem to have a problem with comprehension. I pity you.
Green Apple logo … I like!
MDN word: if it’s up to me, green can be the ‘only’ color for the logo
Yeah, keep it up with the green Apple logo talk guys. Then the Beatles will start all over again. Look…
http://www.applecorps.com/
I remembered the logo from my old blue album
That will be a lot easier on the eyes too, instead of revolting fluorescents.
Now if only LEDs were more affordable for general lighting circumstances, especially as the sale of incandescent light bulbs are being outlawed around the world.
Fluorescent bulbs may be a bit more efficient at first glance but they suck in so many ways – annoying entrainment of the nervous system with their frequencies (stress?), poor spectrum, contain mercury, are impractical or don’t work at all in certain circumstances (e.g. extreme temperatures), can’t be dimmed (at the most 10 -20 % on some), take too long to “warm up”. They also have a much higher failure rate if turned on and off frequently. For these reasons they are often left on continuously when not needed, thereby wasting energy.
Thorin,
Apple, Inc. owns it now:
“Apple Inc. will own all of the trademarks related to “Apple” and will license certain of those trademarks back to Apple Corps for their continued use.”
link
interesting to see all of the hate thrown at “tree huggers”….
it seems that steve is one of them.
yes, greenpeace was wrong to chase apple when most offer tech companies are worse, but it got the PR they wanted, and it got apple to respond by making an already impressive record look even better.
now the question is, do they admit apple is doing well and start after dell, hp, et all?
…time will tell if they are doing the right thing.
from the greenpeace site:
“Apple has declared a phase out of the worst chemicals in its product range, Brominated Fire Retardants (BFRs) and Polyvinyl Chloride (PVC) by 2008. That beats Dell and other computer manufacturer’s pledge to phase them out by 2009. Way to go Steve! “
“Apple hasn’t gotten an actual green product to market, but no other electronics manufacture has either. That’s a race worthy of the wizards of Cupertino.”
you can all bitch all you want, but both Apple and greenpeace have a lot to gain from this if played right……
Parade out Al Gore and let him talk about Apple’s global cooling initiative to launch millions of Windows PCs into orbit around the sun to provide shade on Earth (and Mars) to save the polar ice caps.
Are there no engineers among the environ-wackos that can design the “greenest stuff” ever? Apparently, the only thing that these environmental nut cases can do it whine and demand that other people more brilliant than themselves do something better than what has been done and also more economically. It seems that these kooks are only capable of sanctimoniously delegating responsibility to others rather than developing solutions themselves.
So anyone with any concern for the environment is automatically considered a tree-hugging hippy by some people? That’s really intelligent isn’t it. No wonder the world is in bad shape… ignorant masses of people choose to believe the disinformation spouted by various vested interests (involving money and/or power funnily enough). They do this instead of going and looking at the evidence from the science for themselves.
It’s also kinda like a religious zeal isn’t it? Anyone with concerns over the environment is labelled the equivalent of a <insert your most hated religion> and considered a looney fanatic.
The planet is in bad shape, we’ve caused it, and now we have to fix it before things get much, much worse.
It’s interersting how the current issues of environmentalism was compared to the issue of smoking in past generations in that “tree-hugging” film “An Inconvenient Truth”. That is, propaganda was spouted by vested interests to introduce Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt, so that people wouldn’t believe that smoking caused lots and lots of health problems. They even trotted out doctors to support their claims.
Well, the health problems of individuals pose little risk to others (except maybe financially), but if the planet gets sick, then *everyone* suffers.
It is pure and simple selfishness to not believe that we’re causing problems for the entire Earth.
Also, it appears Greenpeace have really done themselves a disservice by targeting Apple Inc, but then, they also do other crazy crap too – I think they’re a political party more than anything. If one assumes Al Gore is genuine about his environmentalism, I really doubt he’d be on Apple’s board if they were as bad as Greenpeace make out (or am I just a sucker?)
Are there no engineers among the environ-wackos that can design the “greenest stuff” ever? Apparently, the only thing that these environmental nut cases can do it whine and demand that other people more brilliant than themselves do something better than what has been done and also more economically. It seems that these kooks are only capable of sanctimoniously delegating responsibility to others rather than developing solutions themselves. It’s ironic that the ones who complain the most, do the least to solve the problem.
GreenMac is good but we should all know that Greenpeace is a communist party under the hood.
http://www.umich.edu/~mrev/archives/1997/10-8-97/environment.htm
Go Steve!!!!
“It’s ironic that the ones who complain the most, do the least to solve the problem.”
Not half as ironic as you posting that. ^_^
Anyone else notice this:
Dell has proposed a simple measure – assume a seven year product lifetime
When did a Dell computer last seven years? OK well some do I guess, a tiny fraction. Dell laptops?!?!
I do have a seven year old G4 still working that does some work occasionally, and a PB3400 (ex the fastest laptop in the world!) that’s maybe ten years old that works sometimes, it has to be plugged in and I reckon there’s something wrong with the power supply board, but seven years is a stretch for Apple so what about Dell?
But all in all it’s not much less than I had expected from Apple and it’s good to see Steve address the issue of communication, obviously most of the other issues are being addressed in the normal process of business.
And the idiot who’s skull needs busting. Why the West (esp US/UK) is hated is because we keep on invading other countries to get at their natural resources and dig/drill/ship them out using western companies/currencies/banks etc who make the big profits. Why are Exxon/BP/Conoco/Shell et al chasing this filthy oil out of the ground to burn and pump in to the air that we breathe when there are much better energy sources available.
Few people know UK invaded Iraq before WWI, few people know the US has invaded in some shape or form 65 countries since WWII. We all know Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer are big bullshitters yet most people believe Microsoft is good even now. What about the rest of what most of us believe, what the media feeds us, is it true? Is it right?
Here’s a few great vids,
The]http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8957268309327954402″]The History of Oil[/url]
Heavy]http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?docid=2229511748333360205″]Heavy Watergate, The War Against Cold Fusion[/url]
<a href=” http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?docid=8677389869548020370“>
And look for stuff by John Pilger while you’re at Google video.
^ @BustingTheSkullsOfIdiots: Right on!
@ChrissyOne: Go sell crazy someplace else. We’re all stocked up here.
Oops, messed the links up. I’m sure you can all work them out anyway being Mac users
Greenpeace is to Apple’s greening as a rooster is to the sunrise. They are an extortion racket deserving no support.
As for the move towards LED backlighting of displays, the quality goes way up, the power down and the mercury goes out. Apple spins this as a green move, which it is, but it is much more. I wish Jobs would publicly tell Greenpeace to STFU.
‘(I’m a bit thick today.)’-
well I’m glad you got the skinny on it….different stanza, though.
Busting-
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”grin” style=”border:0;” /> (I kid)
Well put x2. A record.
‘I hope AEF bombs Cupertino’-
yeah, let’s kill the people and save the environment for……who?
This smells like the work of the Evil Al Gore and the greenpeace communist machine that spreads it’s enviromental liberal propaganda that threatens democracy and liberty.
“If you are not with me, then you are my enemy”
Maczealot:
“It seems that these kooks are only capable of sanctimoniously delegating responsibility to others rather than developing solutions themselves.”
Umm.. sorry, I’m not fan of Greenpeace and it’s fraudulent campaign to smear Apple, Inc. in order to raise money, but this is a bad argument. Say for example people were upset at Ford for releasing the flawed Pinto design where the gas tank was poorly placed and could explode if the car got rear ended, well people complaining about that should not have to design a whole car to point out that one flaw.
Apple has smart engineers so if it makes sense to manufacture their computers without these dangerous chemicals, they will figure out a way to do so. They are already light years ahead of everyone else on the CRT issue alone.
@truth, and all the other anti-environmentally conscious folks:
If you hate environmentalists, why don’t you try moving to Mexico or China and living with all the garbage they toss around in any vacant piece of land, or living with all the fumes that gush from their cars and trucks, or with the crap they toss in their streams. You’d love it!
I’m loving these open letters. Talk about power.
MW=using: “Jobs gives another clinic on using the media.”
Greenpeace is a bunch of disingenuous flacks.
On their web site, by simply quoting Steve saying “We’re changing our policy,” they imply that Apple has only just now – and presumably at Greenpeace’s urging – jumped aboard the greenwagon. However, it’s clear if you read the entire paragraph that Apple is simply changing their policy about making public their plans for the future concerning environmental issues – nothing more.
While that in itself is a nice thing to have happen, I’m actually sorry that Steve gave Greenpeace even that much. These dishonest political animals will continue to make hay with this, at Apple’s expense, as long as they can – and as long as there are still liberal idiots (clarification: not all liberals are idiots, and not all conservatives are wise) out there who take promises as accomplishments. Frankly, that’s how most politicians are elected.
mw: feeling, n. What idiots use in place of rational thought.