November 25th, 2008
MacBooks: World's greenest family of notebooks
Apple’s latest Get A Mac television commercial proclaims the new MacBooks to be the “world’s greenest family of notebooks.” The ad touts the MacBook as completely recyclable and says that it uses a quarter of the amount of power of a single light bulb and has no mercury.
According to the ad copy on the page:
When we redesigned the new Macbook (sic), our designers and engineers set a goal of making not only the greenest notebook Apple ever produced, but the greenest family of notebooks. So every new Macbook (sic) has been built using materials that are highly recyclable and free of many harmful substances present in other computers. Apple engineers also designed the software and hardware to work together, in order to maximize energy efficiency and minimize the carbon footprint of the MacBook. Even the packaging was reconsidered and reduced, so there would be smaller boxes to ship and less material to recycle. The result is exactly what we hoped for: the greenest family of notebooks ever made.
One would think that Apple’s move in notebooks would placate Greenpeace who have taken issue with Apple in the past over its environmental record. Greenpeace’s Guide to Greener Electronics ranks top market leaders of the mobile phone, computer, TV and games console markets according to their policies and practices on toxic chemicals and takeback.
In the first three iterations of the Greenpeace Guide, from March 2006 to August 2007, Apple was stuck at a dismal 2.5 (out of 10). Then in June 2007, Apple jumped to 5.5 and to 6.0 in December 2007. In the seventh edition Apple made headway on the list, surpassing Microsoft and jumping to a score of 6.7 (tied with Sony Ericsson, LGE, FSC and HP).
In the November 2008 edition, Apple earned an overall score of 4.3:
The big PC companies such as Dell, HP, Apple and Acer drop down… Although Apple drops a place, it improves its overall score slightly to 4.3, with much better reporting on the carbon footprint of its products. Apple has also recently show leadership on removing the worst toxics substances with new iPods free of toxics brominated flame retardants and PVC. All Apple products should be free of these substances by the end of 2008, which will challenge other PC makers to follow their lead.
You can watch the new Apple ad on its Web site and on YouTube.
Jason D. O'Grady is the editor of PowerPage.org, which has been publishing daily mobile technology news since December 1995. For disclosures on Jason's industry affiliations, click here or to view Jason's full profile click here.
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