It’s revealing that Apple has chosen to highlight the green credentials of its latptops in its latest piece of marketing. Among the ‘reasons you’ll love a MacBook Pro’ is listed the fact that it’s ‘highly recyclable and free of many harmful toxins’.
This used to be something of a weak flank for the Cupertino crew. Despite its much-admired ‘clean’ approach to design, campaigners used to highlight the fact that Apple didn’t apply the same standards of cleanliness in its approach to the environment, and was in fact lagging behind its dowdier rivals in eliminating toxic chemicals like cadmium and lead in its products, the use of brominated flame retardands (BFR) and PVC, and in not allowing consumers to replace or recycle batteries in their iPods.
Historically, the IT and technology industry has come out top when we ask consumers around the world to rate the sustainability of different industries – without much justification, one might think - and indeed, IT companies are notable by their absence when we ask experts to identify corporate sustainability leaders.
But as the issue of e-waste has risen up the agenda, Apple and its rivals have felt the need to up their game. Steve Jobs announced ‘a greener Apple’ in 2007, it now performs respectably in Greenpeace’s annual ‘Guide to Greener Electronics’, and the company recently emerged (mostly) vindicated from a court case where Dell challenged its claim to have ‘the greenest family of notebooks’.
Ironically, this evidence that the industry is starting to take its responsibilities seriously comes just as we’re seeing signs that the shine is coming off its reputation for responsibility with consumers. How long before the industry’s performance is better than its reputation?
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