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
I saw “as good as it gets” once. Me = Clever
ecowarrior
Hollow words. I hope AEF bombs Cupertino. And yes I use a mac. Their environmental practices are dispicable!
Leave the trolling to professionals.
Saying “I care about the environment but I am not a green” is about as sensible as saying “I believe in no gods at all but I am not an atheist”.
If you care about the environment, and recycle, or changed all your lights to fluorescents, or bought a sensible car for commuting, or donate usable clothing to thrift shops, or compost leftovers, YOU ARE GREEN.
If you are a woman and you want equal pay for equal work, the same opportunities for advancement as men, the same working conditions and a discrimination and harassment free workplace, you are a feminist.
Stop allowing tiny minorities or abusive majorities to mangle the definitions of words.
And is any intelligent person still sucked in by “Red” bating? I hope not.
@Kyoto Protocol
“Sometimes we wonder why the other 6.4 billion people on the planet dislike Americans so much, but posts like the above highlight why quite succinctly”
Suck what?
@Fred J.
“write to Greenpeace & complain until they do.”
your kidding right?, greenpeace doesn’t CARE who polutes the most anymore. It’s all about the greenbacks, and they can’t extort the government of China can they?
This page-by-page splitting of user comments is rather problematic. Because once you are on page 2, you’re pretty sure that very few people are going to read your comments.
Anyway, back on page 1 Jake wrote:
Impressive letter overall. Apple seems to be doing great in this area. Greenpeace doesn’t know what it’s talking about–oh, what a surprise!
One quibble: Apple states that “we do not allow the use of prison labor at any stage of the recycling process.”
What the heck’s wrong with prison labor? To the degree any inmate can be rehabilitated, work certainly contributes to that. If it’s privately managed, they pay taxes. If it’s community service, it’s paying back society. The only complaints I can imagine are from unions who don’t like the competition–and why should they get to stop anyone else from working? What am I missing here, anyone?
There is a problem with using prison labour. I think Jake makes the assumption that it would be prison labour from a Western country such as the USA. But what if its chinese prison labour? Falon Gong members and political activists are routinely locked up. In fact anyone, inconvenient in the eyes of the Chinese Government is locked up. So if Apple allowed the use of prison labour then they would be exploiting whatever political processes ease the use of what is, essentially, slave labour.
‘If you are a woman and you want equal pay for equal work, the same opportunities for advancement as men, the same working conditions and a discrimination and harassment free workplace, you are a feminist.’
No, you’re not. You just have common sense.
No one has said a peep about the LED backlight by eo 2007? I just had to replace the inverter (ballast) for the backlight on my G4’s LCD display. Cost me $127 with installation and tax, which was better than the $400-500 it would have cost for an entire new LCD had the light itself been bad. At that price, I might have been tempted to buy a new iMac. However, I saw the announcement here at MDN before I left my baby in the shop, which prevented me from making an unwise, impulse buying decision today.
If LEDs make brighter, longer-lasting, mercury-free displays, I’m all for ’em!
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TowerTone
‘If you are a woman and you want equal pay for equal work, the same opportunities for advancement as men, the same working conditions and a discrimination and harassment free workplace, you are a feminist.’
No, you’re not. You just have common sense.
It was once common sense that “blacks” were good for nothing more than manual labour and that women were too dim to participate in politics.
It is pointless to dismiss appropriate terminology merely because said terminology has been saddled with political baggage.
‘t was once common sense that “blacks” were good for nothing more than manual labour and that women were too dim to participate in politics.’
No, those were common prejudices, and were not shared by all.
‘It is pointless to dismiss appropriate terminology merely because said terminology has been saddled with political baggage.’
Look here for a few different forms of ‘feminism’
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminism
Wanting what the Constitution guarantees you does not put you in a particular group.
Wanting something based on your differences with others does.
WMD:
“I am not sure where the other “Carbon Offsets” are coming from? Does anyone know?”
Yep, we’re shutting down gas fired power plants and building windmills. One little catch…gas fired turbines produce electricity at about 2.5 cents per KWH. Windmills produce electricity at about 18 cents per KWH. Ready for a $800 electric bill instead of your current $100 or so? Ain’t ignorant evironmentalism wonderful?
Why do right-wingers castigate the global warming theory without evaluating it on it’s own merit?
Just because Rush says so, and they’re Rebublicans, automatically, according to seemingly all of them, global warming is BS.
Global warming is a fact. Anyone who disputes this is a liar. The only thing left to determine is exactly how much of an effect humanity has had on global warming.
‘Global warming is a fact. Anyone who disputes this is a liar. The only thing left to determine is exactly how much of an effect humanity has had on global warming.’
Odd, this is the point of view I hear on Rush. So I guess us ‘right wingers’ do understand there is global warming.
And why do left wingers believe just because something bad happens, America is at fault?
http://www.canadafreepress.com/2007/global-warming020507.htm
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2007-02/osu-atd021207.php
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17997788/site/newsweek/
And more
http://www.salon.com/opinion/paglia/2007/04/11/global_warming/index3.html
(scroll down)
OK, Salon and MSNBC/Newsweek are not considered basions of conservatism. Go figure.
Irony
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2007/03/16/interfaith_group_braves_storm_in_climate_change_trek/
and more
http://www.epw.senate.gov/pressitem.cfm?party=rep&id=257909
I guess Rush has a bigger crowd than many care to admit…….or these people think for themselves and come to the same conclusions. I know I did.
What Apple has done here is set the stage as the leader in enviro conserns in the CPU related industry.
Greenpeas has already cried about a lack of WW recycling plan, but so be it.
Apple has just shown they are the leaders in the “green” space. Greenpeas only hope now seems to be trying to dictate to Apple they MUST be the leader in every area.
Now Apple can simply refute that with their overall leadership, and tell Greanpeas that for some small specific area of their programs – to go pound sand – and pick on HP or Dell who, overall, are behind.
It takes a ton of sting out of their future attacks, and makes any future nitpick about some certain issue at Apple look really weak and petty.
Apple has also set the stage for the next year+ in their efforts, so now Greanpeas and the rest must wait for that length of time to pick on any single area Steve laid out.
Brilliant.
Greenpeace is total shit. And I say that as an environmentalist.
They just want cash, instead of telling people how to save energy, avoid destroying rainforests, etc.
MW: piece. We both like peace, mine’s just spelled different.
Way to go Steve!! Now maybe those frickin’ environmentalists can find somebody else to go bitch at for a while like Dell, HP et al. While I’m at it–greenpiss I don’t hear any whining from you about what china did to all our poor animals that died from eating the tainted pet food–but of course I forgot you already drink their chinese coolaid
@BustingTheSkullsOfIdiots:
What on earth makes you think the rest of the world has the slightest jealousy of your God-fearing bible-bashing gun-toting burger-stuffing inward-looking “culture”? LOL.
Fsck the environment. We don’t need more green – my lawn’s enough. We need more red-white-and-blue. Start a war in one of them IRA countries, I-ran, I-rack, and I-rland.
((( What? An “e” you say…? ))) Who gives a steer about that? Bomb ’em too! Bound to be a terrorist or two eliminated.
If it wasn’t for global warming we’d still be in an Ice Age!
Thanks, Conner.
I’m gonna use that one.
Every chance I get!
I’m glad that Steve has finally responded to GreenPeace’s accusations and is making some kind of effort to make Apple products less polluting. There is always something more that we can do to make the world a better, cleaner place.
I don’t doubt that Apple has done some things to make there operation greener. I doubt to the extent that Steve claims that they’ve been, but this is heading in the right direction.
If Apple can work towards a better recycling program, that would be even better. We all know that Macintosh owners tend to use their equipment a lot longer than their Windows PC owning cousins, but that when we do finally upgrade, we want to be sure that our beloved equipment won’t be leaching into our drinking water from a landfill.
Too bad GreenPeace failed to comment on the industry-leading standards that Apple has had in place for several years.
Apple has been walking the walk, but GreenPeace is apparently just interested in companies talking the talk.