“Executives say that consumers’ use of Apple products accounts for 53% of the company’s total 10.2 million tons of carbon emissions annually. That’s more than the 38% that occurs as the products are manufactured in Asia or the 3% that comes from Apple’s own operations,” Burrows reports. “‘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,’ says CEO Steve Jobs in an interview. ‘It’s like asking a cigarette company how green their office is.'”
Burrows reports, “Apple’s total carbon figure is an eye-opener. HP and Dell put their carbon emissions at 8.4 million tons and 471,000 tons respectively, though both are larger than Apple in terms of revenue. Their numbers exclude product use and at least some manufacturing, though. The companies have said that including those factors would boost their carbon totals severalfold.”
“Jobs and Apple have been working on their effort for several years,” Burrows reports. “They brought in the consultant Fraunhofer Institute to help crunch data and hired chemists to eliminate toxins… ‘This could completely change how companies are evaluated,’ says Alexandra McPherson, project director with Clean Production Action, an environmental group.”
Apple says “it’s time for companies, in tech and elsewhere, to examine their environmental impact as broadly as possible. For tech companies, that should include the energy-gobbling products they sell. ‘We’re not being intellectually honest with ourselves if we don’t deal with the products that we make,’ says Timothy D. Cook, Apple’s chief operating officer,” Burrows reports.
Full article here.
Apple’s statement:
With a complete life cycle analysis of greenhouse gas emissions, Apple sets a new standard of full environmental disclosure. We’re the only company in our industry that considers the environmental footprint of every product we make. And we’re the only company to add up all our greenhouse gas emissions and tell you how they are distributed across — and beyond — a product’s lifespan.
Our life cycle analysis accounts for all emissions associated with our products. That includes raw material extraction, manufacturing, packaging, transportation, a three- or four-year period of use,* and recycling. In the course of this analysis, we determined that less than 5 percent of our emissions come from our worldwide facilities. In other words, more than 95 percent of Apple’s total greenhouse gas emissions come from the products we make.
That’s why we’ve taken the innovative approach of reporting emissions data alongside detailed information about our products’ energy efficiency and materials composition. You’ll find this information in our Product Environmental Reports. These reports help educate our customers about how Apple products affect their own environmental footprint. They also allow customers to track Apple’s progress toward reducing greenhouse gas emissions with each new product.
Learn more at Apple.com here.
MacDailyNews Take: Green is the new black.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Brawndo Drinker” for the heads up.]
This climate change crap is all about government takeover of our freedom and private property. Don’t fall for it for one second. Less government now.
I can’t wait to go from working more than 50% of the year for the government to 99% of the year by the time the Maobama’s get done with us. Our founding fathers are doing back flips in their graves.
http://scholar.google.com/scholar?as_q=&num=100&btnG=Search+Scholar&as_epq=Global+Warming&as;_oq=&as;_eq=&as_occt=any&as;_sauthors=&as;_publication=&as_ylo=2005&as;_yhi=&as_allsubj=all&hl=en
The link above will take you to a Google Scholar search for recent peer reviewed Articles describing the existence, causes, and effects of Global Climate Change. Go ahead, dig through. These are not blogs, not news papers, and not TV shows from reporters who don’t know what they are talking about. This is a list of Scientific papers, written and reviewed by scientist actively working in their fields. Any reasonable, open minded person will find all of the evidence they could possibly ask for.
Are they all perfect? Of course not. But 46,000 papers should provide enough data. Climate deniers are just 21st century Creationist. They are completely closed minded and don’t care to look at the actual mountains of data presented.
theloniousMac:
Think about this for a minute, logically:
#1. It is a fact that fossil fuels were created over millions of years.
#2. It is a fact that humans have massively burned fossil fuels over hundreds of years, releasing significant amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere, where it stays and has a greenhouse effect (warms the planet).
That is, something that took hundreds of millions of years to accumulated is, relatively speaking, being released instantly.
#3. Actual measurements – the 10 hottest years since humans have been tracking (i.e. roughly the last few hundred years), have all occurred in the last 15 years (data from 2006).
All 3 major ice areas on the planet, Greenland, the arctic, Antarctica are all experiencing major melting, on balance, year over year. And the warming rates keep getting revised upwards, and emissions keep going up (ignoring a slight, current downturn due to the recession).
For example, the ice sheet in Greenland has retreated so much that a island that was buried completely in ice has been revealed. We didn’t even know it was there until the ice melted!
And plans are being made for “across the top of the world” shipping, since the arctic ice is melting so much – this, again, is unprecedented.
———————————-
I don’t understand why people still question global warming, logically.
Or are you saying, yes, the planet is warming, but so what – let the ice all melt?
Personally, I’m extremely uncomfortable with the idea of messing with the planet’s climate, although the exact long term effect isn’t clear, beyond flooding of low lying areas, weather change, more desert, hotter.
And I understand that doing something about this will be expensive and disruptive, both to various industries, and personally – habits will need to change.
And one more fact: the cost of doing nothing (i.e. evacuating low lying areas or building dams) is much more than the cost of doing something.
I remember, when G.W. as in office, reading comments by people around the world saying that they had nothing against Americans, just our leaders in government and their policies.
I believe they might have a change in attitude if they read some of the comments posted in MDN.
Pure eco-religious pandering bullshit. The one thing I really dislike about Apple these days.
It’s all about consistency with Conservatives. It doesn’t matter that they are consistently wrong on a given topic, they will hold it to their graves.
http://scholar.google.com/scholar?as_q=&num=100&btnG=Search+Scholar&as_epq=Global+Warming&as;_oq=&as;_eq=&as_occt=any&as;_sauthors=&as;_publication=&as_ylo=2005&as;_yhi=&as_allsubj=all&hl=en
Any reasonable, open minded person will find all of the evidence they could possibly ask for. For example, above is a link from Google Scholar. Not a blog, not a radio show host, not a newspaper reporter. But thousands of papers written and reviewed by scientists working in their fields. It’s not hard. But conservatives need consistency. Even if it hurts people.
Nowadays an essential move, if one won’t show up as an unconscious and brainless leader.
You liberals are nuts. CO2 is such a tiny, miniscule part of the atmosphere. It has zero effect on “climate change”. This movement is a way for the UN and evil dictators of the world (Obama’s buddies), to steal our private property and liberty. Only a lemming would fall for this BS. As another poster said above, how are you freaks going to stop the continents from shifting??????
Sir Gil Bates – you are an embarrassment
@Prague
http://scholar.google.com/scholar?as_q=&num=100&btnG=Search+Scholar&as_epq=Global+Warming&as;_oq=&as;_eq=&as_occt=any&as;_sauthors=&as;_publication=&as_ylo=2005&as;_yhi=&as_allsubj=all&hl=en
How do you shrug off thousands of papers written and reviewed by scientists in working in their field? Do you put on head phones and turn up the volume on TV? Do you just try hard not to look at anything coming from a real scientist? Or do you just need to have emotional consistency and so you deny anything at all that you might have had doubts about in the past.
Thousands of Papers have been written detailing the existence, causes, and effects of global warming. It’s not hard to find. You just have to listen to people that know what they are actually talking about, and not Radio or Television show hosts or bloggers with.
I wonder where these scientist-statists-drones get their grants to do these studies and other studies that they want to do??????????? From liberal-commie-democrats and their ilk. If the results don’t show what the Maobamaists want, no more grants.
There are more studies out there by world renowned scientist that state the exact opposite. The Weather Channel’s CEO is an adamant opponent to this climate change hoax.
http://www.globalwarminghoax.com/news.php
http://www.heritage.org/research/energyandenvironment/globalwarming/index.cfm
http://www.junkscience.com/
…”I believe they might have a change in attitude if they read some of the comments posted in MDN.”
Not really. To vast majority of us foreigners (whether living in the US or elsewhere), most puzzling part of the US politics is the existence of the conservative platform as practiced by the Republican party in the US. We have always assumed US is one of the most developed western nations, with the highest levels of industrial, technological, as well as social development. Then, we get to see them elect someone who (to us, foreigners) is clearly not that intelligent, and what’s even more puzzling, they re-elect him four years later. Probably the most puzzling thing is the system of values among those conservatives, which is often very similar to that of religious fundamentalist countries, and in complete opposition to the rest of the developed world. Issues such as family planning, birth control, place of organised religion in society, taxation and care of society, controlling greed (by regulating business and commerce)… Other developed nations have evolved past some of those conservative concepts and we (the foreigners) had always lumped America together with those developed nations. Yet, they have such as significant mass of conservatives pulling the human progress back.
Comments (from Americans) on MDN seem to reflect those two conflicting directions, but haven’t changed the opinion about the current American president. Anyone who got a chance to hear him speak extemporaneously can clearly see the difference between him and his predecessor. He so obviously doesn’t belong to the conservative camp; he is on the progressive side of the line.
@Kelly,
Why is it that deniers can only point to blogs to back up their claims? Particularly sites like ‘The Heritage’ foundation that is best known for their defense and and lobbying for Tobacco.
http://scholar.google.com/scholar?as_q=&num=100&btnG=Search+Scholar&as_epq=Global+Warming&as;_oq=&as;_eq=&as_occt=any&as;_sauthors=&as;_publication=&as_ylo=2005&as;_yhi=&as_allsubj=all&hl=en
Here is a list of peer reviewed scientific papers, written and reviewed by scientists in their field, detailing the existence, causes, and effects of global climate change. These are scientists from around the world. Many funded by grant money from the US Federal level, many are not. The vast, vast, VAST majority of which conclude that Global Warming is real, it is dangerous, and it is caused by human decisions of the past 100 years.
You go ahead and believe a lobbying company on the payrolls of Coal and Oil companies. I will believe the 10’s of thousands of peer reviewed academic journal articles written by individual scientists from around the world.
…”There are more studies out there by world renowned scientist that state the exact opposite.”
That is factually completely incorrect. The volume of scientific research out there that supports global warming theories vastly outnumbers that which opposes it, both in volume, as well as in quality. The scientific body that disputes the global warming has been overwhelmingly funded by a very small segment of heavily-polluting industries (Oil, coal, steel, auto and similar). The ration of money-to-research project is disproportionately higher among those than among the vast majority of research supporting it.
What is most fascinating is that the politically conservative in America are now equating their current president with the global warming initiatives, as if the President just launched the whole global warming concept (perhaps like the health care reform) and it never existed before he got elected.
For us foreigners, American politics has, over the past 15 years turned incredibly immature. Vast majority of discourse has turned to campaign slogans (mostly untrue, but effective as sound bites), and the net effect is that nothing gets done, small problems turn into big ones, big problems get bigger, and America gets to hate each other’s politics more and more. Frankly, it is quite disappointing.
From the Heritage Foundation website:
“The Heritage Foundation is a unique institution-a public policy research organization, or “think tank”.”
“We generate solutions consistent with our beliefs and market them to the Congress, the Executive Branch, the news media and others. “
TOTAL LIABILITIES & NET ASSETS = $ 159,673,534
Where did a research institution get that kind of profit? These are the people you are choosing to believe, instead of the tens of thousands of scientists and researchers from around the world.
Dear Conservatives, you’ve been had.
I trust the Heritage Foundation any day of the week over the Mabamist liars trying to steel everyone’s private property and liberty with this “Climate Change-Global Warming” HOAX. The US government is in a free for all grab of the private sector, our hard earned $$, and our rights. Open your freaking eyes.
The majority of you eurotrash love to be ruled over and told what to do. The majority of US citizens are nothing like you and never will be. This Maobama fraud has fooled many of us middle of the roaders and we will vote him and his kind out of power. Ronald Reagan was our recent hero. George Bush did many, many things right. Obama is a cowering freak that has thrown our allies under the bus and buddied up to dictators. We are not happy at all with him. We also could care less what you think predragqueen. Our country was not founded the way yours were. Our constitution protect our rights and the liberals HATE the constitution.
This argument of yours is the same bull sh*t angle that Maobama is using with Maobamacare. News flash, it has nothing to do with the insurance companies. The people, on their own, don’t want Maobamacare. And Global Warming or climate change being caused by humans is equally untrue. No matter what you say your not going to pull the wool over our eyes. The sun is causing this and your heroes are using their argument to grab more money, power, and control. Screw off.
“There you have it, folks. Proof positive that the man-made global warming fanatics are as intelligent as rocks. These self-deluded wretches are completely out of touch with reality.”
There you have it, folks. Proof positive that the science deniers (and wingnuts in general) have practically zero sense of irony and sarcasm.
LOL. You FAIL again.
By the way, I have come to realize there aren’t actually that many wingnuts here at MDN. Just theloniousMac, ron, maybe two or three more regulars and this Maobama automaton, who likes to spam the discussion with countless posts of senseless wingnut talking points under countless different names. As usual, the empty vessels make the most noise.
By the way #2: the guy who runs junkscience.com, Steven Milloy, is just another former Big Tobacco & Oil lobbyist. A true junkscience-meister.
It never ceases to amaze me how these so-called conservatives don’t really love America. They just love themselves and Big Business.
Don’t you understand? The Heritage Foundation is a conservative think-tank that has the stated purpose of fooling Americans for the financial gain of their clients. They say so themselves right on their website. And you would still rather believe them than 10s of thousands of independent researchers? Look, I’m a capitalist too, but not to the level where I will willingly deceive and harm others for my own financial gain. These are the same people that lobbied for the Tobacco industry -and still do!
WTF, man?
sorry the above was supposed to be @Nate.
Whoever wrote that nasty response (you could have signed it like most people do here), my name is actually Predrag. And I’m not from UK (I’m assuming that’s what you think, since you appended “Queen” to my name). I’m from further South.
These responses are quite symptomatic. There is no reason, or argument. Most fascinating thing is, they always contain well-worn phrases from soundbites straight out of conservative media. You will be hard pressed to find original thoughts (although occasionally, someone will make an effort). They keep repeating “commie”, “liberals” (amazing how they turned something extremely positive and gave it seemingly negative meaning), “Maobamacare” (what on earth does that mean??? That’s not even a word!!!), Mabamist (another non-existent word; what does THAT mean???)…
Peoples of Europe used to really admire America, precisely because of the principles upon which it was built. We admired those progressive liberal forces that founded and built America, when conservative, medieval Europe punished its non- and wrong-believers, taxed them to death without giving anything back, and colonised half of the world with brutal force. Well, come end of 20th century, we get to watch, in disappointment, how those progressive forces in America get overrun by conservative ones, pulling America back to where Europe was 100 years ago, fighting wars, colonising other nations (with a modern twist, of course), limiting their own people’s freedoms, arresting and holding indefinitely without trial… In the last 20 years, America has practically undone all it has built (in blood) when it was created. What’s worse, half of its population can’t even see it.
@ Prague,
“Sir Gil Bates – you are an embarrassment”
I’m afraid the emotion of embarrassment is something you and your inbred friends here aren’t capable of understanding. But thanks for the sentiment.
@ Predrag,
I can only imagine that if I were not an American and I read the imbecilic drivel spewed out by some of these slope-headed, knuckle dragging, flat-earth followers here I would indeed detest them in addition to their leaders. But maybe you are more tolerant of their ignorant arrogance.
I don’t see a lot of difference between them and the crazed fundamentalists we are fruitlessly fighting. Wrap a towel around there head and it’s hard to tell them apart.
@Predrag
I don’t know where you are from, but your obviously not from America. The ‘PredragQueen’ joke was a slur, basically calling you a homosexual. You see, the conservative who said that is really expressing his own inward sexual inadequacy. He probably is very familiar with the ‘Private Browsing’ feature on Safari -if you know what I mean- and then despises himself afterwards. This is likely due to his upbringing where his father (or other male figure) used sexual advances as a method of holding power over his family.
As for Maobamacare? I thought that was a mistype, but it appears more than once. I guess that is probably some sexual inadequacy thing as well.
Sir Gill,
You may be exaggerating there a bit, but your point is clear. And you are right; ignorant arrogance is perhaps the most challenging trait in a person to tolerate.
What I also find baffling these days is the volume of plain non-constructive criticism out there. They loudly complain against their president, but don’t they realise that it implies that the alternative candidate would have been better??? I simply cannot believe anyone in their rational mind would have suggested any such thing.
Same for this big health care thing; are they actually implying that the existing system in America is actually better than what’s being proposed? Can they be that blinded by their political affiliation?? I’m really struggling to understand, since many of these seem to be intelligent people. How can a political platform be such a powerful force, to override common sense?