“ClimateCounts.org aims to force companies to clearly state their environmental efforts and provide this information to customers as a tool that contributes to their purchase decision. “Business is being pushed by consumers to do its part to solve the climate crisis. The scorecard allows consumers to make good climate decisions in their everyday purchases, and it’s having an impact,” said Gary Hirshberg, ClimateCounts.org chairman. Hirshberg is also the CEO of organic yogurt maker Stonyfield Farm, which finances the campaign,” Christian Zibreg and Wolfgang Gruener report for TG Daily.
“At least in this survey, Apple doesn’t look great. The Cupertino-based company ended up with only 11 out of a maximum of 100 points for its ecological and climate efforts. Apple’s results fall far behind other tech companies: IBM is at the top with 77 points, followed by Canon (74), Toshiba (70), Sony (68), Hewlett-Packard (68), Motorola (66), Hitachi (51), Samsung (51), Siemens (51), Dell (49) and Nokia (37). ClimateCounts.org claims that Apple has no publicly stated climate impact review information available, there are insufficient efforts to reduce the climate impact, there is no climate policy stance and very little reporting on its emissions available,” Zibreg and Gruener report.
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Note: More about Apple’s environmental efforts here.
I have requested a list of Climate Counts technical qualifications to pass judgement on the companies on its hit list. So far no reply.
Enviros are a fundraising RACKET. They’re NOT objective, well-meaning groups. The more crazy nonsense they spew, the more headlines they get from a compliant media that needs to draw readers/viewers with the latest “crisis”! Even if there were a bit of global warming due to CO2, there’s very little we could do about it and it probably wouldn’t cause too much harm. The only long-term energy solution, of course, is nuclear. Oh, and BTW, nuclear power plants can now be built that produce basically NO radioactive waste. The real disaster is our energy policy.
@Think
So were not going to be cooked slowly in our own juices? Were going to be frozen as a food supply for future generations instead, wow what a relief.
ditto what the real ron said.
Wouldn’t Algore and Slick Willy have to have morals to help solve the “Morals Crisis”?
I actually believe that climate change is a problem, whether it’s caused by human activity or not (I actually believe the evidence supports the former).
However, even I take exception to this kind of reverse-McCarthyism that basically says “if you haven’t come up with some kind of shallow lip-service statement of intent, you’re basically part of the global problem.”
This is, of course, total and utter bullshit.
Let’s analyse a couple of areas where Apple has – for whatever selfish commercial reason – changed things in a way that benefits the environment.
• They produce computers that have longer in-service lifespans than most of their competitors in the PC marketplace. This has the effect of reducing the demand for new computers as well as a benefit in placing less stress on either landfill, recycling or other disposal methodologies.
• The iPod, which supplanted both the tape and CD Walkman as the de facto standard for portable music, is by its very nature more environmentally-friendly than the items it replaced: fewer moving parts and less wear-and-tear are just two reasons why an MP3 player – a market that Apple defined – is better than its predecessors. One battery that needs to be replaced every eighteen months to three years is another reason as opposed to filling the world with alkaline batteries.
And then there’s the simple fact that an iPod evolves with every new firmware update, thus enhancing the functionality and increasing the lifespan of the product: again this reduces strain on the world’s natural resources and reduces the carbon footprint of each unit when compared to the technology predecessor.
• Thanks to Apple’s development of a viable market for digital downloads, both the music and the video industry have a mechanism for servicing their respective markets by moving bits as opposed to atoms. Whether they like it or not, Apple has indirectly helped those companies to reduce their carbon footprints as they a) don’t have to produce a physical product, b) they don’t have to transport that product and c) customers don’t have to drive to a retail location to buy or rent that product.
This advantage now also extends to TV as well as iPod.
• Connecting an iPod to a car’s personal stereo is a far more environmentally-friendly approach to in-car entertainment than a daisy-chain of CD or MD autochangers. Less cabling and less plastic are just two factors. But we should also remember that we’re using the same iPod we use when we’re walking or listening to our home stereo. The net result is only one product being produced as opposed to three or four which serve the same purpose in different spaces.
• Apple’s packaging is also more efficient than it was before: I have the box for an iPod touch in front of me and the box for an old 1G iPod up on my shelf – I would argue that you can fit about eight times as many iPod Touch containers into the space taken by the older unit. That means one-eighth of the burden on transportation and recycling. And don’t even get me started on iPod nano or the Mac mini.
Some companies need to make environmental amends because their products and their methods of doing business suck (did I hear someone say Coca-Cola?), however some other businesses – and I include Apple – have created an environmental advantage simply by the products they make and the way in which they’re used.
It is partly Apple’s fault. They should have gone public with a denunciation of Greenpeace when they pulled their extortion act. Appeasement does not work. It only leads to more blackmail.
I do think it is important not to poison the environment we live in to the degree possible. That said, these kinds of groups do not do their supposed cause any favor with such stupid methods of determining who follows the values they favor. Even a 5-year-old conservative could see what’s wrong with that method, as evidenced here.
Still, all these pressure groups of all persuasions have one thing in common, particularly the conservative (as opposed to conservationist, though they’re guilty too) groups, they want power over other people’s lives. Power-seekers are the lowest form of scum in my book. We have so-called liberal groups that want to control production via all manner of schemes, and control and take what people have earned. Then worse, are the conservatives who also want to take what others have earned and finance bullshit like the endless Iraq undeclared war while not going after the people who actually attacked us, but also want to control people’s bodies, by making illegal private consensual activity between adults, and trying to control women’s bodies by making abortion illegal, the idiotic drug “wars” and other crap only the most vicious brain-dead could be for. These pressure groups are all evil, and are made possible by the same notion that other’s individual lives are within their domain.
There seems to be no one of real standing that questions the premise of anyone to control the lives of others, to question the whole premise underlying so much of what’s going on, particularly not the people who should be in the front lines of this effort, University professors, and to a lesser extent, the media (who are almost totally worthless, worse than worthless, directly harmful).
@ClimateCounts.org
Tell the guys who pay your bills I don’t like ground glass in my dairy, even if it’s environmentally friendly ground glass.
http://www.fda.gov/oc/po/firmrecalls/stonyfield03_08.html
BOYCOTT STONYFIELD FARM.
This is a PR stunt for this yogurt company. They’re smearing Apple to get publicity for their self-serving “environmentalist” sales campaign. Let it backfire on them in a big way.
BOYCOTT STONYFIELD FARM. Spread the word, Apple fans!
ClimateCounts.org stupidly learned from Greenpiss? Haven’t we learned that publicly stated goal is a meaningless nonsense as a tool for ranking?
Yeah, I wonder why Apple DIDN’T counter Greenpeace more forcefully?
I’m with Falkirk, Steev, LinuxGuyAndMacProdigalSon and a half dozen others here.
Piss on the climate and these looney tunes. Sound like asshat libs, proud they are part of the entitlement generation, and cant cope with the real world.
The world will end in the year 1900… opps, no I mean 1985, opps, forgot, missed again, umm, oh, yeah 1999, that french dead dude who wrote a bunch of nonsense that no one seems to understand said that! Opps, we read that wrong, its 2000, damn it! Ok, then it has to be 2012, because that one group, ummm, oh, yeah, the Mayans said so, because you see their calendar stopped on Dec 21st 2012, you see, yeah, those Mayans knew something we don’t, beside how to feed themselves, oh yeah, and human sacrifices to some would be Sun God and Wind God really won’t save you starving civilization. I mean, come on, living on this god forsaken planet just sucks, so I really must comment on all of it and tell you all that the world will end… soon, no really, it will… I think?
All these tree huggers measure is what companies are SAYING they do. Not what they ARE doing.
So now Apple too has to waste time and resources on this non-issue…
Idiots.
Stonyfield Farm??? Where on earth did this come from??? And how is it related to this ClimateCounts.org? Or Apple?? (and while at that, why would you boycot Stonyfield Farm for an obvious accident; do you actually believe they put glass in their yogurt on purpose!!!???).
I can see a lot of people here who claim here that Holocaust never existed. It is a bit surprising, mainly for two reasons. First, the usual stereotype of a Mac user is that he/she is liberal-leaning, progressive, educated type (generally receptive to what overwhelming numbers in scientific community support). Second, now that even the most resistive of all governments in modern history has begun admitting that human-induced climate change is real and needs to be addressed, it’s rather strange to see people who still, for some strange reason, refuse to accept that (perhaps they work for oil companies….?).
Still, I agree with LeMecDuTex about the fact that Apple as a company generally does more with respect to climate change than it is credited for. I don’t know anything about ClimateCounts.org, so I won’t pass summary judgment on them (there is plenty of that already done here, I’m sure with no more specific knowledge about the organisation than mine). They may be in it for publicity. They also may be doing it because the actually believe in what they are doing. Again, not knowing anything about them doesn’t allow me to declare anything.
If they are in fact right, this is an easy problem for Apple to fix. All they need to do is appoint an environmental officer (if they don’t already have that function) and have this person work with all those eco-NGOs around the world to make sure they know what Apple does in this respect. All these NGOs are necessary in today’s world when big energy has so much power they can get away with anything and everything.
It doesn’t take long (approx. 5 sec) to search the net for info on how the “scientific community” feels about Global Warming….everyone above this post seems to think it’s fake….why? Sleep better at night? ——— copied from Wiki – “These basic conclusions have been endorsed by at least thirty scientific societies and academies of science,[4] including all of the national academies of science of the major industrialized countries.[5][6][7] While individual scientists have voiced disagreement with some findings of the IPCC,[8] the overwhelming majority of scientists working on climate change agree with the IPCC’s main conclusions.[9][10]”
The threat of glabal warming notwithstanding, how can anybody differentiate between computer makers? They all (including Apple) have their production outsourced to the same Chinese sweatshops, they use the same components from the same manufacturers (Intel, Toshiba) who also outsource production to Taiwan or Mainland China.
This outfit is simply steaming because nobody at Apple sent them a list of promises. Wankers!
I think we may have to go back to the drawing board when the world cooled off this past winter and emissions are still up. How about building it right the first time, not cutting costs on material, and having the customer dispose of our equipment properly. Is that to hard?
@Ray
And you’ll go to heaven when you die… Get a flippin’ clue dude! Sure the climate has changed on this planet in the past…ON A GEOLOGIC TIMEFRAME!! Not over a matter of years/decades! But ignorance is bliss so keep on keeping on with your “beliefs” and let “God” take care of you.
@MCCFR
Thank you for some excellent points. I agree that digital downloads have made a welcome reduction in energy usage and pollution due to the decreased manufacturing and transportation-related requirements of digital downloads vs. physical media.
This is nothing more than a publicity stunt by a group who knows that no headlines would be generated if Sony or Dell were named as the worst because, honestly, those are companies who are no longer relevant. But the media idiots would love to jump on Apple because it’s a hugely high-profile company.
As someone who formerly believed in global warming until I began researching the issue myself (as opposed to listening to the media always state this hypothesis as if it were fact), I’d suggest reading these articles:
Little Ice Age is still with us
The politics of global warming
There is no man made global warming. Everything works in cycles. These are the same idiots who diverted food to make fuel that was less effcient than what we already have in the earth naturally, OIL.
@I’m confused…
you lost me at “copied from wiki”
Hey Cleetus, who put a nickel in your back and pulled your string? No need to dig on someone for their religious beliefs. Leave that to the MicroSuck boys in their forums. Be a bit more courteous here.
People – you have got to wake up and smell the money trail. Al Gore has won a Oscar and the freakin’ Nobel Peace Prize (how does the facade of Global Warming bring about peace, by the way?) for his load of crap. He will even sell you Carbon Credits for your misdeeds of carbon emissions. He will fly his huge jet across this world, spewing who knows how much carbon emissions, just to tell you to ride your bike to work instead of driving. ALL of this to be holier than thou. Oh, and let’s not forget that little thing called the almighty dollar. That’s what he is really after.
In the 70’s, Time Magazine told us that right about now, we should actually be in an Ice Age. A FREAKIN’ ICE AGE. How are we supposed to predict the future when my weather can’t the the 5 day forecast right?