10/26/2006, 12:50pm, EDT
Thursday, October 26th
Greenpeace forced out of Mac Expo
Greenpeace's 'Green my Apple' stall today was shut down at the start of MacExpo in London by event organizers who claim they received complaints from unnamed sources. Greenpeace set up the stall in an attempt to raise awareness about concerns over the use of toxic chemicals in Apple's products. The Greenpeace volunteers manning the stall were signing up Mac fans to challenge Apple to 'go green,' according to the organization. Flyers explaining the Green my Apple campaign were handed out to members of the public along with organic green apples. The volunteers have vowed to return to the expo tomorrow to continue the campaign.
"This reaction is totally over-the-top" said Iza Kruszewska, Greenpeace International campaigner at the expo. "Apple refuses to address our criticisms on their products, both for the recycling and for the use of harmful chemicals. Instead of hiding their head in the sand, Apple should be a world leader in the greening of the electronics industry, not lagging behind," Kruszewska added.
Greenpeace released an environmental report in late August rating Apple as a 2.7 out of 10 with low scores in almost all criteria -- which included the use of toxic chemicals, recycling, and quality of take-back programs.
"It's time for Apple to use clean components in all of its products and to provide a free take-back program to reuse and recycle its products wherever they are sold. We are challenging the world leader in design to also be a world leader in environmental innovation. We challenge Apple to have a product range on the market by 2007 which is free of the worst toxic chemicals," Kruszewska concluded.
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It is all about money. These exhibitors paid LOTS of money to be on the floor (5K-30K or more just for the floor space) and having activity in a neighboring booth obstruct customer access to YOUR booth is a surefire way to tick people off.
You can be reasonably sure that Apple didn't have anything to do with it - that would be a PR disaster.
Obviously, to some extent all of this kerfuffle can be taken with a grain of salt because Greenpeace clearly believes that Apple is the vendor that they can most likely pressure to change. They may well be right, Apple is the only vendor that really seems to care about more than just shipping a grey/black box and so it's actually kind of surprising that Jobs apparently doesn't give a cr*p (and has been quoted as saying something to that effect).
I'm *hoping* that Apple is simply waiting pull one of their 'rabbit out of a hat' presentations -- get Greenpeace up there in a big surprise announcement that Apple is going carbon neutral and phasing out nasty chemicals from the manufacturing process and the motherboards. However, unless you take the time to write to Apple (Greenpeace makes this easy) then change will probably come later rather than sooner.
jon
-Christopher
Greenpeace is pushing this as much, if not more, for making political hay than that Apple is actually doing so much worse than anyone else in the market.
They do seem to be annoyed that Apple hasn't rolled over and played dead, which almost worth it.
Speaking on behalf of the 70+% of the US buyers who have funded Apple since 2001 (ie the iPod boom), who cares if it's cheap and the waste isn't in my backyard? Seriously, who recycles anyway this is America we buy new not recycled or used.
/end of social comment