Apple Tells the Greens: Buzz Off

Eli,

I have nothing against re-cycling, unless I'm forced to recycle. I put minimal effort into it. As best I can tell much more than 50% of trash put in recycling ends up in the regular landfill, so why bother?

Anyway, Apple apparently thinks consumers are more like me, favoring design, price, functions and features over the blessing of a marginally beneficial seal of approval.

How is it that Apple is NOT public enemy number one for the lefties? It has massive income inequality. It outsources manufacturing to China. Its former CEO was a tyrant who back-dated stock options. It is a tax avoider. It has massive amounts of cash on its balance sheet, which should be put to good use. And now it has betrayed the greens.

Bill

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0712/78442.html

Feds rethinking buying Apple products

SAN FRANCISCO — The feds are thinking twice about buying Apple computers after the company announced plans to withdraw from an environmental rating system.
Federal officials who focus on sustainability issues met Wednesday to discuss the question, according to a government source, and will seek a meeting with Apple soon.
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Last week, Apple decided to stop using an environmental certification program, the Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool run by the Green Electronics Council, a Portland, Oregon-based nonprofit. EPEAT was developed through a stakeholder process supported by the EPA.
The EPEAT rating system is used to monitor a computer's environmental impact throughout its lifecycle, including the end of its use. The program is used by governments, enterprise, universities, health care and other large institutions to make purchasing decisions.
Federal procurement decisions for fiscal 2013 are being made now, the government source said. Federal officials are worried that the government's efforts to buy environmentally friendly products will be set back, the source said, adding, "Apple's competitors are looking at this and saying if they can get away with this maybe we can too."
Apple did not respond to a request for comment.
The city of San Francisco has already decided to block purchases of some Apple products, such as laptops and desktops, by municipal agencies. The iPad and iPhone have not been subjected to the rating system.
"We like to buy Apple products but it puts us in a quandary that they are not participating in the EPEAT registry," said John Walton, San Francisco's chief information officer. He said the city had some Apple purchases in the pipeline and will have to evaluate what to do with those purchase. He plans to talk to other municipal CIOs about the issue on Thursday.
Other companies and government agencies participating in the EPEAT purchasing program include Ford, Yale University  — and the White House, according to the organization's website.
Lyle Nevels, interim associate vice chancellor for information technology and chief information officer at the University of California at Berkeley, said the university has not made any decisions yet about Apple. "We are concerned about environmental protection and sustainability, and that's why we want to understand Apple's decision to go in another direction," he said.
"Despite the popularity of Apple's iPad tablet computer, in university settings, laptops and desktop machines are still kings," Nevels said.
In a statement posted on the EPEAT website, the Green Electronics Council said that it regretted that Apple would no longer be registering its products, saying that "EPEAT is more than simply a product rating — it is also a community effort by all interested stakeholders to define and maintain best practice in environmental sustainability for electronics."
News of Apple's withdrawal from the system was first reported by CIO Journal.
Apple has told The Loop that it "takes a comprehensive approach to measuring our environmental impact and all of our products meet the strictest energy efficiency standards backed by the US government, Energy Star 5.2. We also lead the industry by reporting each product's greenhouse gas emissions on our website, and Apple products are superior in other important environmental areas not measured by EPEAT, such as removal of toxic materials."
This article first appeared on POLITICO Pro at 5:31 a.m. on July 12, 2012.