Green My Apple
“Electronic waste (e-waste) now makes up five percent of all municipal solid waste worldwide, nearly the same amount as all plastic packaging, but it is much more hazardous. Not only developed countries generate e-waste; Asia discards an estimated 12 million tonnes each year.
E-waste is now the fastest growing component of the municipal solid waste stream because people are upgrading their mobile phones, computers, televisions, audio equipment and printers more frequently than ever before. Mobile phones and computers are causing the biggest problem because they are replaced most often. In Europe e-waste is increasing at three to five percent a year, almost three times faster than the total waste stream. Developing countries are also expected to triple their e-waste production over the next five years.
“Right now, poison Apples full of chemicals (like toxic flame retardants, and polyvinyl chloride) are being sold worldwide. When they’re tossed, they usually end up at the fingertips of children in China, India and other developing-world countries. They dismantle them for parts, and are exposed to a dangerous toxic cocktail that threatens their health and the environment. You can’t recycle toxic waste.
If Apple doesn’t drop the toxics from its products, it doesn’t matter how good a recycling programme they have because toxics make recycling more hazardous. And eventually, the toxic chemicals will be released. Dropping toxics makes reuse and recycling of products simplier, safer and cheaper.
Recycling:
Apple finally came around to a limited recycling programme in the US, but they can do better. Greenpeace want them to offer a comprehensive take-back and recycling programme worldwide. Not just in the US or where Apple is legally compelled to.
It’s time for Apple to use clean ingredients in all of its products, and to provide a free take-back programme to reuse and recycle its products wherever they are sold. That means:
* Remove the worst toxic chemicals from all their products and production lines.
* Offer and promote free “take-back” for all their products everywhere they are sold.
Greenpeace has been asking for not just “good enough.” They want Apple to do that “amaze us” thing that Steve does at MacWorld: go beyond the minimum and make Apple a green leader. It’s not about bruising Apple’s image, Apple should be an environmental leader.
“The amount of electronic products discarded globally has skyrocketed recently, with 20-50 million tonnes generated every year. If such a huge figure is hard to imagine, think of it like this – if the estimated amount of e-waste generated every year would be put into containers on a train it would go once around the world!
Greenpeace want Apple to be at the forefront of green technology, and to clearly show other companies how to do it the right way. But they want YOU to tell Apple to go green to the core — they listen to their customers, not to Greenpeace.
Innovative or Conventional?
Of course Apple isn’t the only company that needs to change its ways. But in a recent Greenpeace scorecard, Apple ranked lower than HP, Dell, Nokia, and Sony. For an industry innovator, Apple is falling off the cart while the leaders of the industry are speeding ahead.
Apple is lagging behind both Dell and HP, who have both promised to start removing toxic chemicals from their products. And HP and Dell both have much better global “take back” programmes than Apple. Start a revolution on your desktop.”
