Lenovo Tops Eco-Friendly Ranking 94
gollum123 writes to tell us that according to a recent list compiled by Greenpeace, Lenovo has topped the list of "eco-friendly" companies scoring an 8 out of a possible 10 while Apple fell to the bottom of the list with only a 2.7. "Iza Kruszewska, Greenpeace international toxics campaigner, said the industry had made some positive steps in the last 12 months with firms starting to act rather than just issue statements of intent. Of the 14 companies profiled, said Ms Kruszewska, nine now score more than five out of 10."
Re:All you do is promise you'll be good (Score:4, Informative)
Read Greenpeace's report here. [greenpeace.org]
It's quite simple why Apple's on the bottom of the list. All the other companies have done something to green up. Sony Erricson's eliminated PVC & BFRs. Dell's adopted a worldwide takeback policy & committed to a date for elimination of PVC & BFRs. Lenovo's also got a takeback policy & reports on recycling as a percentage of sales (as opposed to Apple's "just trust us" policy.
Re:Why Apple came last .... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Bah. (Score:5, Informative)
Environmental economics was the subject I studied at university; I have undertaken environmental assessments in the field.
There is no way Greenpeace has access to this information. A true and fair assessment cannot be done externally. This is a fund raising publicity stunt and absolutely nothing more. It has no credible science or economics behind it whatsoever.
Re:Why Apple came last .... (Score:5, Informative)
Go to here: EPEAT [epeat.net]
And check out the silver awards in all the categories. Notice that no manufacture has been awarded a gold yet.
In all of the categories Apple is represented by a few models which score at or near the top of the pack.
Re:All you do is promise you'll be good (Score:2, Informative)
Re:But... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Why Apple came last .... (Score:3, Informative)
I see "Silver" ratings on almost all of them, but the numbers put Apple highest.
questionable conclusions (Score:3, Informative)
Something seems fishy.... (Score:5, Informative)
On their own page, they go as far as manipulating the truth to make it appear that
Apple is doing less work than it is actually doing: http://www.greenpeace.org/apple/about.html [greenpeace.org]
"Apple finally came around to a limited recycling program in the US, but they can do better."
This is worded as if it just happened recently. Except that the US (and Japan) take-back program started
up in 2002. (Announced in 2001) It includes not only recycling of its own computers, but also other
vendor's computers and monitors. I wonder which way they consider this to be "limited"?
http://www.apple.com/environment/recycling/ [apple.com]
http://www.apple.com/environment/ [apple.com]
The images at the top of the Greenpeace site show Chinese children holding color iMac keyboards dating
before 2000.... before recycling programs in the US and Asia actually existed.
The page is designed to get Apple to do two things:
* 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.
The question here is, is it reasonable to persecute Apple for not meeting an arbitrarily set "worst toxic chemicals" goal? And I say this because "worst toxic chemicals" is fairly ambiguous.
They recycle plastics, foam, paper and whatnot from their products, they follow a number of environmental standards in the US and Europe and maintain their own.
Should Apple offer free "take-back" worldwide? Even Levono doesn't do so.
http://www.pc.ibm.com/ww/lenovo/about/environment
However, in the very least, it should be reasonable for Apple to accept recycled equipment worldwide, if at
a fee.
Re:You want an eco-friendly computer? Here it is! (Score:3, Informative)
That 2.0GHz, isn't remotely comparable with an Intel or AMD 2GHz CPU. Indeed, I'd expect it to perform less than half as fast as you might expect from that rating... Much worse than even a 2.0GHz Pentium 4...
For a high-performance system, I'd suggest a Turion... $80 on newegg for a 25W MAX, 2.0GHz AMD CPU, that will work in many cheap and available socket 754 motherboards. Not to mention that Cool'n'Quiet should give much lower idle power usage than anything VIA has to offer.
For miniITX systems, look for Geode CPUs. I see several on eBay regularly, and occasionally a few on pricewatch. For $200, you can get everything but the case, PSU, and HDD, and with a Geode NX CPU, that will smoke the fastest VIA CPUs, and still be lower power. Older "Mobile Athlons" will also work quite well, but expect the Geodes to be lower power, easier to get, and inexpensive.
More expensive, but equally good, are Intel's low power "ULV" CPUs, but good luck finding a miniITX motherboard for any of them.
Re:Most unexpected (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Most unexpected (Score:3, Informative)
Fact of the matter is, China is not a communist regime. It's a not-quite-so benevolent dictatorship. However, dictatorships (and all governments for that matter) can only survive when there's order in the realm, and when there's actually people in the realm. An unstable environment unstablizes governments. Look at the aftermath of Katrina. If a disaster of that magnitude were to hit the rest of the US all at once, the US government itself would be destroyed in the process, likely replaced by a military dictatorship or facist state (as if it isn't happening already...). China realizes this, and all the environment-friendly policies these past few years works towards this end.