back to article 'Green' Apple: We've smudged a bit off our carbon footprint

With a product refresh rate that sees it chomp through natural resources like a chubby child demolishing a Mars bar, it's difficult to see Apple as a particularly environmentally friendly organisation. Nonetheless, the fruity firm has said it is committed to making its operations as green as humanly possible. In its latest …

  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    "Apple pumps out 33.8 million tonnes of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere each year, which is about the same as Nepal."

    Considering Apples yearly income is twice that of Nepal that's not bad really.

    1. Eddy Ito

      It depends on what you mean by income. Apple, for FY 2013, had an operating income of $49B which gave them a net income of $37B. Those numbers actually bracket the GDP of Nepal which is roughly $47B. Of course since Nepal gets most of its energy from renewable sources like wood, agricultural waste and dung and is poised to tap vast hydro-power reserves it actually puts Apple to shame.

  2. James 51

    Unless they start making their products less difficult to repair and upgrade it's all green wash.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      What if they make it so you don't need to repair them? Other than a broken screen, what else is there in a cell phone that a user could even hypothetically service? If the wifi quits, it isn't like anyone else has a socketed wifi chip you can simply pop out and replace.

    2. Don Jefe

      User serviceability isn't automatically 'green'. Sure, sometimes that serviceability can reduce waste, but break even is generally the best case and dig a hole to fill up with baby penguins levels of waste is more common.

      The big factor most everyone misses is the overproduction of parts that are packaged for individual markets. Super, ultra simplified, to ensure on demand parts availability globally, at all authorized locations you've got to make fucktons of each part you offer because your supply chain is at least 90 days out. That means you've got to buy enough raw materials or individual components to cover regular production plus warrantable spares plus spares for the channel, have it all ready at the same time and packaged into 'brand cohesion' market specific packaging and do it three or more months in advance. If you make a significant change, like the locking tab on a battery cover (for example) that means you're producing two different parts that all need the packaging bit as well.

      The above is negligently simplified, but the point is that it takes enormous amounts of resources to produce spare parts for user serviceable stuff. Most of which won't sell. Some intern in the channel will be assigned to disappearing huge quantities of spare parts every time there's a significant revision or a model is retired.

      Yes, it is possible to reduce waste with user serviceable products. But it isn't a given and requires incredible amounts of effort just to figure out if exploring the idea is worthwhile. I'm not saying serviceability is 'bad', but it isn't automatically good either. When you're talking about millions of spare anythings it can snowball really fast and create crazy huge levels of waste.

      1. mike2R

        "the point is that it takes enormous amounts of resources to produce spare parts for user serviceable stuff. Most of which won't sell"

        This might be true for their consumer electronics. But soldering a part like RAM onto the motherboard of most of their laptops and latest iMac is just flat out wrong. Apple don't have to make the RAM for user upgrades any more than they make the RAM they sell with the machines. These parts are made by third parties and will exist whether Apple allows their machines to be upgraded or not. All soldering RAM does is reduce the lifespan of their computers.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Why focus on Apple. Pretty sure Google, Microsoft and others are all as bad.

    1. This post has been deleted by its author

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Where Hamill is concerned, it just good ol'fashioned Apple baiting.

  4. returnmyjedi

    I wonder if the carbon savings afforded by their new Fruity Loop HQ over its lifetime will ever offset the amount of carbon and such released in its construction? My prediction? Non.

    1. streaky

      New building over old building carbon saved versus cost of new building? Dunno, it's plausible. There's a lot of scope for more efficient lighting and lower cooling energy use to be fair to them.

  5. Mark 85

    Carbon Footprint?

    That's a nice bit of PR, but what about all the toxic and semi-toxic waste generated in the manufacturing process? Or the empty Starbucks cups in the trashcans at HQ? And this applies to every company...I'm not just picking on Apple.

  6. Joseph Lord

    Pretty good lifespan

    Actually despite the lack of upgradability the lifespan of Apple products seems pretty good. Trade in values for even quite old kit aren't bad. At least those I'm aware of seem to get passed on through the family until they are truly obsolete or destroyed.

  7. NotaFanboi
    Unhappy

    Promoting disposable tech is not green

    Data centres running on sustainable resources is brilliant and commendable but designing products that sell millions of units which are essentially disposable is not. By disposable I mean that when you grow out of them you can't upgrade them, you have to buy a bigger better one. I like Apple kit but I don't think that is right.

    1. big_D Silver badge

      Re: Promoting disposable tech is not green

      The best way to be more green would be to design products that last twice as long, before they have to be replaced - and I'm not just talking about reliability; I'm talking about performance.

      The problem is that technology is still advancing at a fast rate, although on the desktop it has slowed, because Windows uses less and less resources with each new version, at the moment. But OS X is getting more and more bloated.

      My old iMac 24" is pretty much unusable, but my similar vintage Windows PC runs faster under Windows 8 than it did under Vista and 7.

      In the mobile world it is even more frenetic than the PC industry has been for nearly a decade and devices are replaced at a very high turnover rate.

      To be truly green, this cycle needs to change. We need to go back to mobile devices that last 4 or more years, before they become fully obsolete. I'm not looking at Apple specifically, in fact Android is a much worse offender, or at least the manufacturers releasing equipment running Android are.

      The problem is, everybody is only interested in selling new hardware and people have come to expect free software upgrades... It is a vicious circle, if they can't charge for upgrades, then their only income is in shifting new hardware.

  8. hEdly

    BS Flag

    I cry BS. How are the stores, which take power from the grid, powered by renewable resources. They have no control over that. So they are probably buying carbon offsets. BS BS BS.

    1. Don Jefe

      Re: BS Flag

      The key there is the word 'offset'.

    2. streaky

      Re: BS Flag

      "How are the stores, which take power from the grid, powered by renewable resources"

      Directly or indirectly? Directly they can't be, indirectly - by getting your power from a company that buys renewable power. Pretty expensive way to do business though.

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    What Apple is doing here is best done with a dirty mag in private.

  10. Sean Timarco Baggaley

    Dear Jasper Hamill

    Can you tell us how a company that is famous for only refreshing each of its (very small) product lines roughly once a year, can be described thus:

    "With a product refresh rate that sees it chomp through natural resources like a chubby child demolishing a Mars bar, it's difficult to see Apple as a particularly environmentally friendly organisation."

    If Apple are "a chubby child demolishing a Mars bar", what the hell does that make Samsung, Dell, or LG? A massive swarm of locusts, devouring acres of crops in a few hours?

    I suggest sir gets a sense of perspective. Or a life. Either would suit me, as long as neither involves writing ever more ridiculous click-bait pieces like this worthless shite. If I wanted to read this kind of ill-informed bollocks, The Motley Fool has no shortage of it.

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