Monday, December 1, 2008

Electronic waste and Apple

Just when I'm thinking about replacing(*) my old work laptop (a Lenovo X60) for one of the new Apple Macbooks, Greenpeace trashes Apple for its inaccurate claims regarding how green its laptops are (Daily Tech article, Greenpeace report on Apple [PDF]).

As I've noted before there is much more to being green than just energy efficiency, so in this respect Apple's claims about being green are disingenuous at the very least.

However, if you take time to look at the Greenpeace ratings and their change over time its clear that of the main laptop manufactures are all pretty in the same general area - the electronics manufacturers scoring more highly tend to be more related to consumer electronics and cell-phones. And the real bad guys are Microsoft and Nintendo.

(*) Supplementing is perhaps a more accurate description, rather than replacing. The X60 is still a great ultraportable laptop that I do a lot of real work on, but for conferences and travel I'm hoping a Mac may be more practical.

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