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The news hit like a sledgehammer, tearing at the hearts of environmentally conscious Apple fanboys ( a significant portion of Apple faboys, that is) and severely challenging their loyalty to the House of Jobs.
What news? Find out, after the jump ...
According to an article at geek.com:
A note posted on the EPEAT website last week stated that Apple has now withdrawn all its products from the EPEAT registry, and doesn’t intend to submit any future hardware for review.What is EPEAT? Wikipedia has the answer:
The Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool (EPEAT) is a method for consumers to evaluate the effect of a product on the environment. It assesses lifecycle environmental standards and ranks products as gold, silver or bronze based on a set of environmental performance criteria. It is managed by the Green Electronics Council, itself a program of the International Sustainability Development Foundation, which ‘envisions a world where commerce, communities and nature thrive in harmony’.Basically, EPEAT-certified products need to be recyclable into sub-components that can be reused or at least do no, or minimal, damage to environment. Apple was actually an early proponent of EPEAT, although some of its products have never been EPEAT certified, including the wildly popular iPad and iPhone. This is because their components (battery, screen, etc.) are glued together in such a way that they cannot be easily disassembled into reusable components.
But Apple was at least producing some EPEAT-worthy items. Not any more. The company is washing its hands of that responsibility, while touting its aesthetically cool new features like retina displays, etc.
"Aesthetics over the environment" is what some are saying.
And so, the GreenTech Geek presents his first-ever poll:
Apple's decision to withdraw all its products from EPEAT will make me ..You can indicate your answer in the comments section between now and Sunday, January 15. I'll present results in a future column.
__ MORE LIKELY
__ LESS LIKELY
... to buy an Apple product in the future.
Meanwhile, I'm gonna see what's been going on in the Microsoft section at Fry's lately.
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| Until next week ... |
