When the environmental organizations list companies according to their work to preserve our natural resources and minimizing the pollution in the form of toxic metals and various hazardous plastic substances there are usually two manufacturers that stand out; Lenovo in a good way and Apple in the other end. This is mainly because Apple (for some unexplainable reason) has chosen not to reveal its environmental policies. This has been changed now through a letter to the public where Jobs explains what Apple is doing to spare our environment, but also what it is planning to do to further ease the stress on Mother Nature.
He informs us that Apple, unlike many other American companies, lives up to the European RoHS directives. Jobs also says that Apple will transition from CCFL to LED backlighting in 2007 and will have eliminated all CCFL-based monitors by 2008, which will reduce the mercury of all products to a minimum.
The sad part about the letter is that Apple doesn’t settle for informing us of how good they’ve been but also decides to kick the previous mentioned Lenovo, but also Dell, Gateway and HP. Something we can’t really understand why as it seems completely unnecessary. Especially as Apple has now proven itself to live up to the current environmental standards. Something the rest also does according to the digging the environmental groups have done.
All in all, we’re happy that Apple has made its policies public and that it’s of such a good quality. All that remains now is to see how Apple will be ranked in the next survey by for example GreenPeace, which has been one of the groups that have criticized Apple the most.
