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Dell and Nokia the Most Green (Tech) Companies
da_matta writes "Greenpeace has ranked top electronics companies on their attitudes towards ecology. In addition to what toxic materials are used in manufacturing, the report on "greeness", for example, considers how the recycling of old products is handled and how ecological issues are considered in company processes and decisions. Idea is that the ranking is updated quarterly, and companies would like achieve to the top position. Dell and Nokia take the top position with a rating of 7/10, with Apple, Acer, Motorola and Lenovo falling behind with ratings worse than 3/10."
Interesting Dell & Nokia seem to cost the least green too =)
Something interesting about tech companies is that concern for the environment is something that comes in usually later in the company's lifetime--after they've become millionaires.
I don't find that too surprising. I think there's so much of a divide among large and small makers of computer hardware that smaller companies would be more focused just on competing with the larger companies.
Apple 'what is backwards compatibility' computers is not up the top of the greens, even after they make it so batteries (generally) have to be replaced by their support team instead of third parties? What a shock! I think most of the Apple faithful that I have met are of the 'I love being green but am always too busy to recycle' mindset and so wonder if that is the same with Apple themselves.
Warhammer forums
I am surpised Apple was quite so low on the list
That's because you've been reading Apple's environment page, which is peppered with feel good phrases such as "Apple helps to safeguard the environment" and "Apple recognizes its responsibility as a global citizen"
Apple talking the talk, but not walking the walk. Again.
Oh - and Dell & Nokia are near the top because they've made a greater effort to be green than the other companies.
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
Seriously though, green policies can actually save you money. A PC which shuts down while inactive, or which uses cooler / low power chips is going to save you a quite a bit of money over its lifetime.
Computers have valuable metals in them--can you see an easy way of extracting these?
You have a circular reference there. The metals in these products have little to NO value if the cost of extracting them is more then the metal itself is worth from other sources.
I was surprised that Apple was so low because I always viewed Apple as catering to the artsy-fartsy / neo-hippie crowd (mainly because "back in the day", Apples were considered the best platform for photo-editting and graphics design while the PC was the Office workhorse). That group of consumers were the ones that tended to also be members of greenpeace. So, I would have thought that Apple would have had the demand for cleaner, greener manufacturing processes.
Layne
A better question is what would be the truthfull assessment of greenness of greenpeace be? After all the produce nothing, the only effect they have is to prevent actions. They are the last word in paracitical, pointless organisations - dedicated to the idea that to do nothing is the best course. And yet the burn up valuable resources steaming around the world.
Take the money and energy wasted by greenpeace and put it into something with purpose that actually supports environmental progress rather than political positioning.
And as more and more people become concerned with the mess we are creating, "greeness" gets added to the list of criteria they use to select their next purchase. Smart companies (EG Dell and Nokia) perceive this new customer need and fullfill it, thereby taking that small (but growing) niche market.
Given that greenness ranks fairly low on the average consumer's list of criteria when making a purchase, it might be that the relative eco-friendliness of Dell and Nokia has a lot more to do with being based in countries with strict environmental regulations than it does with market forces.
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
Power consumed by computers ultimately comes from burning fossil fuels, in the vast majority of cases. Intel chips use more power on average, and windows systems typically run more power hungry applications like games, media players, etc than linux systems. I'm not sure about macs.
The process used to create the computers might be clean, but what about their efficiency out in the world? The process used to create an SUV might be ecologically friendly, but if the beast still guzzles petrol, where's the benefit? Some might say the software is beyond Dell's control, but with the amount of stuff they bundle in with the OS nowadays, I wouldn't be so sure.
May the Maths Be with you!
I've been selling and servicing PC's for 11 years now and never once has power consumption or environmentally friendly disposal been a factor in the purchase decision. I don't believe that the majority of people really care what happens when they throw out their PC. Their two choices are 1)throw it in the dumpster, or 2)take it to someplace that recycles/refurbishes old equipment. Most people throw it in the dump because #2 takes too much effort or costs them too much.
People buy Dell because of the price, and occasionally because they received some good service. People buy Nokia and Motorolla because of good product and the fact that it is shoved in their faces by nearly every wireless company. Nobody who wants a Mac is going to switch and buy a PC because they had a low green score.
I think that the "green" streak is being fed by a small by vocal minority. Yes, if everyone was educated on the environmental factors and it was convenient for them to go along with recommendations based on contributing to the overall health of the environment, you might see some purchasing decisions swayed. Mostly on the large corporate level.
Dislcaimer: I studied Environmental Economics at university. I do believe in protecting the environment, and would take a radical approach in doing so in many cases.
However, this report may not be what it seems to be. Very little data is provided as to how they have gathered their information. Assessing the environmental impact of even a small company, or doing an audit of same, is a very large task requiring weeks and weeks of onsite anlysis and testing. It is time consuming and requires a great deal of access to confidential business processes.
I, for one, do not believe for one single second that Greenpeace was given access to such data.
Greenpeace as an organisation gathers very large sums of money annually. Legally and fiscally Greenpeace is not a charity. There are many questions as to what they do with the money they raise. A few annual publicity stunts involving a handful of people, publicity material, and the running of a small ship, do not adequately explain where the money goes.
Greenpeace was famously incorrect in its stance against the Brent Spar disposal and provably lied during that campaign.
I would be astonished if this report was anything other than propaganda - you may draw your own conclusions as to why some companies should be favoured over others. But it cannot be as a result of balanced investigation and scientific method, unless they've arrived at the right result by accident.
I do believe that all companies should report their environmental impact truthfully as a result of a defined reporting standard in their annual reports. This is the only way such data can be accurately compared and contrasted. Some companies do do this volutarily, but we are a long way from an accepted standard method of reporting or auditing thereof.
Why is it that when an "evil" PC company like Microsoft is criticized everyone jumps aboard and takes all claims at face value. When Apple is shown to have done something wrong suddenly there's an excuse for everything. It's a conspiracy, the article is biased, certain details weren't taken into account or whatever it is isn't even Apple's fault.
Case in point:
Dell laptops explode because of Sony's batteries; Dell sucks.
Apple laptops explode because of Sony's batteries; it's Sony's fault!
Godforbid Apple's name is ever besmirched.
As for Apples having superior backwards compatibility thats plain nonsense. The OS 9 mode is clumsy and excessively demanding to run. Even then, it doesn't always properly run old applications or handle old documents. And lets see you run anything from the early Macs.
On my XP machine I've been able to run, fairly easily, DOS applications from the early 80s. I've even run some of the more finicky software from the early Windows generation.
So I'm left to assume that you've never owned a Windows PC otherwise you wouldn't be making nonsense claims of some 90% failure rate.