Today is Blog Action Day I ran into this website by accident about a week ago and I’ve decided to participate and write an environmental post…
Last year October I went to MacExpo here in London and ran into a girl near the entrance of Olympia, Kensington, who kindly gave me a leaflet and a green apple. I had no idea she was representing Greenpeace back then but after my visit to MacExpo I read the leaflet and decided to write a post about Greenpeace and their ‘Green My Apple’ campaign which was launched in September 2006. Ever since I read about the campaign I have had my Green My Apple logo published in my sidebar to make more people and especially Mac users, aware of this problem.
On the second of May this year Steve Jobs decided to publish his message on the front page of Apple’s website saying ‘Today we’re changing our policy’:
Snippet:
Apple has been criticized by some environmental organizations for not being a leader in removing toxic chemicals from its new products, and for not aggressively or properly recycling its old products. Upon investigating Apple’s current practices and progress towards these goals, I was surprised to learn that in many cases Apple is ahead of, or will soon be ahead of, most of its competitors in these areas. Whatever other improvements we need to make, it is certainly clear that we have failed to communicate the things that we are doing well.
Today Greenpeace published another story about one of my favourite gadgets which made me think twice about whether to buy it or not. Scientific tests done at Greenpeace’s Research Laboratories in the UK revealed that the iPhone contains two types of hazardous substances: toxic brominated compounds and hazardous PVC. An independent scientific laboratory tested and confirmed the presence of these substances in half the samples including the phone’s antenna. Next month the iPhone will be released in Europe, but I don’t think I will be buying one unless I would be offered a much greener version…
Sources:
Watch the iPhone slideshow
Read the Greenpeace Amsterdam article about scientific findings
Read article about the Green My Apple campaign
