Wednesday, April 04, 2007

Greenpeace vs. Apple, Part Trey

So Greenpeace has come out with their third report on the evils that computer giants do. There's a few differences here; Apple is now all alone in the red, while Lenovo, that company no one ever heard of, has rocketed to the top of the list in 6 months. A few of the other guys switched positions as well.

Greenpeace is getting more involved in green computing and some items, such as their trouncing of Vista, I completely agree with. This electronic report thing I can't figure out though, particularly the Apple stance. GP has now approached Al Gore to do something about the problem as he sits on the board of Apple. Yes, Apple has a poor takeback program. Personally, I do find that to be a big minus for Apple. They are often compared to Dell's 'global recycling program', although, as Keith points out, Dell doesn't recycle in 30 some odd countries, particularly Latin America and the Caribbean.

Other folks are dissecting the report again, I don't need to do that. But here are my questions:
  • Why were these manufacturers chosen?
  • How is it possible that Lenovo, the big loser, could go from last to first place in 6 months? What does this say about the rating system?
  • Why does GP continue to use language like "Sony-Ericsson... ...took up our demand ", suggesting that they are forcing these companies to do these things?
  • When is this going to end?


2 comments:

Chris Blow said...

Re: "When is this going to end?"

I must have missed an earlier post -- b/c I feel like I'm missing your point now. What do you think needs to end?

I think those a great reasons to be critical of the report, but on first blush it sounds like a great review -- are your critical of it as a whole? Just a little confused.

Thanks!

Mark Ontkush said...

Hi Chris,

I want to know when the ratings are going to end, when the GP report is finally going to stop coming. Is it when everyone hits a 10? Or is it when Apple hits a 0?

If you search ecoIron for greenpeace, you will see that we approached the ewaste problem from different angles. I do think they are doing some good stuff, particularly with Vista, but the ratings thing is a non starter for me.

mark