Apple iPhone Takes a Greenpeace Beating
The Apple iPhone — the geeks very own messiah — has been the hot topic of conversation the world over. Geeks and lay men and women have all been gathering around the proverbial water-cooler with one thing on their mind (two if you include Britney Spears). But the water-cooler at Greenpeace has not been yielding the same happy vibes as Apple would have hoped.
September of 2006 saw Greenpeace launch the Green My Apple website. Rather than asking for green iPods, they were asking for "green" iPods. The question they asked was this: why do Macs, iPods, iBooks and the rest of their product range contain hazardous substances that other companies have agreed to abandon?
May of this year saw Steve Jobs — the Apple god, if you will — announce to the world that "Apple is ahead of, or will soon be ahead of, most of its competitors" on environmental issues. But with the release of the iPhone in June in America, Greenpeace was left alone in the cold. Apple seemingly had just talked the talk, and sat at home on their couch.
So Greenpeace set out to see just what the iPhone was made of, literally. Purchasing an iPhone, and sending it to their UK labs, they found that the iPhone contained "toxic brominated compounds (indicating the prescence of brominated flame retardants (BFRs)) and hazardous PVC."
"Steve Jobs has missed the call on making the iPhone his first step towards greening Apple’s products," said Zeina Alhajj, Greenpeace International toxics campaigner. "It seems that Apple is far from leading the way for a green electronics industry as competitors, like Nokia, already sell mobile phones free of PVC."
Now, this may seem like just an attack at Apple, but the reality is far from it. Greenpeace has previously run similar campaigns that have led to companies such as Dell and Lenovo phasing out the worst toxic substances from their product ranges. In fact, Dell has turned a literal 180, and has become a leading force in the big-business charge towards a greener future.
Closer to the iPhone home, companies such as Nokia, Sony Ericsson and Motorola have all bent to the pressure placed on them by environmental groups such as Greenpeace. Nokia is totally PVC free, and the other two already have released products with BFR-free components.
In addition, Nokia and Sony Ericsson have a global take-back policy for phones that have been manufactured by them. They accept responsibility for the reuse and recycling of their own phones. This is one of those really awesome measures taken by some companies. Unlike the once-off manufacturing changes that, in reality, will save the companies money, a take-back policy forces the company to fork out cash to keep the world clean. Instead of landfills piling up with millions of cell-phones each year, they are recycled at the behest of the manufacturing company.
I doubt I need to say that Apple are yet to implement any such plan, leaving the fate of some 10 million iPhones hoped to be sold this year well up in the air.
The Apple Iphone may very well be the second coming of the technological revolution, but it ain’t doing much for the good of the planet.
Disclaimer: I own Apple products, including a fifth generation iPod. I am a big fan of Apple, and have written about them at Daily Galaxy favorably. This bites!
Greenpeace - Missed call: the iPhone’s hazardous chemicals
Greenpeace - Green my Apple bears fruit
Tags: Apple, big-business, Computers and Internet, green, Green News, iPhone, waste
October 18th, 2007 at 2:46 am
I guess the thing they aren’t saying is that this is a product that nobody wants to get rid of their iPhone because its something that holds its value. Who they should be targeting are so-called “value” PCs that freeze up and get tossed in about two years. Apple products traditionally hold their value and that offsets these concerns in my opinion. They should still work on greening up, don’t get me wrong.
October 18th, 2007 at 2:50 am
from apple’s website:
“Apple plans to completely eliminate the use of polyvinyl chloride (PVC), brominated flame retardants (BFRs), and arsenic in its products by the end of 2008.”
while it sucks that the iphone contains these chemicals, your article neglects to mention this fact.
furthermore,
“Apple’s free recycling program will take back your iPod or any cell phone — regardless of manufacturer or model.”
so yes, apple has implemented a plan to not only recycle the iphone, but also all the phones their customers will abandon when switching to the iphone.
http://www.apple.com/environment/
your omission of these facts seems dubious at best.
October 18th, 2007 at 2:56 am
“In fact, Dell has turned a literal 360″
Think about that. Are you sure it’s not 180?
October 18th, 2007 at 3:07 am
By the ounce, just how upset are we supposed to be about this evil device, compared to, let’s say, all the PVC pipes under my house?
Greenpeace could do some really good work where it matters; but instead they’re only after cheap shots that get them headlines.
How about concentrating more on enabling culture shifts that reduce the amount of driving office inhabitants are tied to twice a day?
How about counteracting the anti-electric propaganda that leaves us crippled and at the mercy of the oil companies?
How about fewer shaved heads and sackcloth, and more elbow grease?
Organizations like Greenpeace could do so much more, with so many more supporters, if they didn’t shed their credibility so often with stances like this.
October 18th, 2007 at 3:23 am
Isn’t it vaguely hypocritical for a green organization to be polluting the planet burning energy to run a website?
Ben: Why should they let facts get in the way of being publicity whores?
October 18th, 2007 at 5:09 pm
It’s real nice how you fixed the obvious logical mistake about Dell to keep yourself from looking stupid, but didn’t bother to add other info suggested in your comments about Apple phasing out such chemicals or mention their recycling program. Don’t use dirty journalism(bloggerism?) to make a point, it just hurts your argument.
Since the iPhone is a cell phone presumably, Apple will recycle it, nulling half of your argument. As for the other half, if Apple doesn’t remove said chemicals by 2008, then you’ll have a fair bone to pick.
I really respect a lot of work GreenPeace has done, but this sort of thing is useless. I am not even sure, the previous gripe with Apple was totally valid as Apple did claim they were already doing many of these things. However, it, at the very least, had the advantage of making them talk about it. Apple (at least to me) seems very happy to work with environmentalists, why bother ruining that just to get a headline?