Slashdot Mirror
Lenovo Tops Eco-Friendly Ranking
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."
But apples grow on trees, you can't get any greener than that.
Mind you, think of the poor turtles murdered each year for Steve Jobs' wardrobe.
liqbase
Say, in 2009 and you get the top billing. :)
Greenpeace is weird. But we already know that
Hyperom.com
From the FTA: "However, Lenovo lost marks for still using some of the most toxic substances to make its products. Other firms in the top five, such as Sony-Ericsson, have already eliminated toxic chemicals including brominated fire retardants, polyvinyl chloride, beryllium and phthalates from their factories."
So can we really say Lenovo tops the list?
Virtual Betting on Facebook for non-geeks.
I had such a conversation with friends recently... does such analysis includes:
/. story and Green My Apple. In short, I believe not everything is black or white, it's rather grey. Of course, I agree that all computer producers should improve their eco-friendliness, but measuring this eco-friendliness is not a simple task.
- The time computers can be effectively used (Apple computers have a significantly longer lifespan on my desks than the PCs)
- The waste of time / energy required to manage the computer (security, virus, etc)
- The user-efficiency related to the operating system itself
- The differences in sleep modes and energy consumption at low usage
- The longevity and eco-friendliness of laptop batteries
- etc etc etc.
See also this previous
Animoog.org
Incidently mine is in the shop with a dead processor cooling fan unit, soon to be replaced. Just testing the faith in the black monolith, thats all.
... absorbing a daily dose of toxic chemicals into the tips of your fingers strengthens the immune system, thus making us less vulnurable to the common cold. It's all explalined in the manual, somehwere near the back in smallish print.
Apple came last in this ranking because, when they've done poorly in this ranking in the past, they sent out the PR attack dogs to undermine GP and the study, rather then making any changes to the practices in question.
Of course, many companies behave this way. When MS discovered during the anti-trust trials that the public's perception of them was a problem, they too responded with PR rather then changing their behavior.
Yes, Yes, I know that both GP and this study are far from perfect, but they are a more objective judge of this matter then Apple itself (or the Apple fanboys who are modding me down as we speak).
As an environmentally conscientious person I must give this particular corporation some credit for trying to do the right thing environment-wise, but I still wouldn't choose to allow my money to fund the militaristic policies of the Chinese state. Arrogant, expansionist and rich Chinese dictatorship is at the bottom of my personal wishlist.
Are they still allowed to use the IBM logo to fool people?
Should invading one's peaceful neighbours be opposed, or rewarded with trade deals?
What? No this is terrible PR for Greenpeace. All over the world Apple owners are grabbing at any anti-Greenpeace thought or news they can get to rationalize their love for Apple. I mean, Apple is cool (isn't that what the ads tell us?) so if Greenpeace disses Apple, Greenpeace must be making it up for propaganda reasons.
Check it out here:
The Damn Small Machine!
This guy is the same guy who produces the distro Damn Small Linux. The distro is basically Knoppix cut down to fit within a 50MB CD. Well, he decided, being a tree-hugger California type, to build fanless and low-power boxes for people to buy. They use VIA's low-power (8 watt peak) x86 "Eden" CPU's and are actually pretty good.
There are now even newer ones by other folks which use the VIA C7; I saw a couple of models at TigerDirect. The C7, while requiring a fan for the highest CPU speeds, goes up to 2.0GHz and uses 20W at full tilt, max. If I didn't already have a bunch of computers (I'm an IT consultant), I'd have bought one already. Matter of fact, my next one will indeed be one of these.
The article is an apparent flame-bait for slashdotters. There's such a sentiment that "Apple is great", "Lenovo is evil, coz they bought our beloved thinkpad and it is run by a Chinese company". There's nothing to see here, in the comment page.
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.
So, yes, if you consider the total environmental impact of a company, those with more expensive products will have a smaller effect. But this says nothing about the relative impact per unit sold, which is what really matters when you evaluate how "eco-friendly" a corporation is.
This report generated quite a buzz in the green blogosphere when it was released (last year). There are some serious questions about the validity of the report.
"Research is what I am doing when I don't know what I am doing." -- Wernher von Braun
This seems to be part of a campaign bend apple into more of a green product.
/ ptb_us.html
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
"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/
http://www.apple.com/environment/
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.
Non sequitur: Your facts are uncoordinated.
Wouldn't one think that Mr. Al Gore, the warrior that is leading us all to carbon utopia in his private jets and SUV's would be able to do something about this? As a member of the board at Apple you would think he'd be leading the company towards a greener way
I suppose he'll just educate us carbon hogs and make it everybody elses problem to reduce their pollutants. As long as he talks about the problem it's ok that him and the companies he is afiliated with are some of the worst offenders.
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.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
"to perform a fair, accurate and precise assessment of a company's environmental impact requires weeks, if not months, of intensive on-site research and measurement"
and when the company involved tells you to fuck off, your only conclusion is to do nothing and ignore the topic? If any of these companies wanted to dispute their positions, they could invite GP in to take a look. You seem to think that the best information to have on the eco-friendliness of products is either none-at-all, or just to parrot back the greenwash spin that their PR companies put out.
Newsflash -> sometimes companies do stuff they would rather their customers didn't find out about. Without lists like this, and groups like greenpeace, we would have even more destructive and toxic process being carried out. We don't use lead paint anymore, and we don't put asbestos in school buildings. This is because campaign groups (it never starts with governments) make a fuss about this stuff.
Good for them.
DRM-free indie games for the PC and Mac: Positech Games