Despite the fact that Apple has never really gotten around to giving us an annual update on their environmental status as Steve Jobs promised in May of 2007, the company has been making some progress on making their company greener. Yesterday’s iPod event was no exception to that: during his presentation, Jobs drew attention to the fact that Apple’s new iPods conform to Apple’s internal environmental checklist.
Specifically, the new nano, new touch, and new classic are made with arsenic-free glass and they lack a host of other toxic materials such as brominated flame retardants, mercury, and PVC. And because they’re made primarily of materials like aluminum and glass, the iPods are “highly recyclable.” Apple’s also tried to minimize the packaging (the touch now comes in a compact transparent plastic container like the iPod nano and shuffle, while the classic continues to use a cardboard box constructed of “Recycled and bio-based packaging materials”).
Longtime Apple foil Greenpeace was apparently pretty pleased. As our cousins at Macworld UK report, the environmental group issued a press release on Apple’s new iPods, saying:
“Greenpeace congratulates Apple for phasing out harmful chemicals like PVC and BFRs in its new, much greener iPods. But we know that Jobs and his team can go even further, and truly take a lead in greening the electronics industry,” said Casey Harrell, Greenpeace International campaigner.
“We hope that this is only a teaser of what is to come, and that we will see more of the same with all future product announcements, from iPhones to Macs.”
Apple’s promised to eliminate BFRs and PVC from their product lines by the end of 2008. While they haven’t quite gotten there yet (several Mac models, for example, still contain at least some PVC and BFRs), they’ve got a few months left to go.
Sounds like we can expect some updates to the Mac line by the end of the year (I hear October).
What Jobs promised was "updates of our efforts and accomplishments at least annually." Providing information like this when Apple announces an update with environmental impact certainly qualifies in my book.
My problem with the checklist is that it looks like Apple has achieved everything it is looking to do. In truth, the checklist has more boxes, most obviously lead. Jobs is lucky Greenpeace isn't going after him about that.
@Dave-O: I think Apple's pretty low on lead as it is. Or, at least, according to Jobs's letter from last year, the current iMac contains less than 1g of lead (compared to 484g for the first iMac). Then again, I guess he doesn't mention any of the other product lines.