Apple EPEAT ranking

Apple's laptops perform well by US environmental standards, but are not perfect, according to recent information. Apple is one of a number of companies evaluated by EPEAT, a government body tasked with approving computers before they can be purchased by other federal institutions. The group assigns gold, silver and bronze medals to products based on a variety of criteria; to reach gold, a computer must not only pass 23 mandatory standards, but 21 of 28 optional ones.

Of the laptops evaluated by EPEAT, Apple has just five silver-level systems, all MacBook Pros between 2.2 and 2.4GHz. Silver implies that at least 14 of the optional criteria have been met. While this is better than Gateway, which has 28 bronze-level systems, and Acer, which is not EPEAT-compliant at all, the statistics pale next to Dell's two gold and 12 silver laptops, and Toshiba's five golds, 15 silvers and four bronzes. Lenovo has the largest number of EPEAT-compliant products at 48 silvers, plus one bronze.

Apple has been a focus of environmental criticism, mainly from Greenpeace, which in the past criticzed the company for failing to remove chemicals like arsenic and mercury, or control the number of computers ending up in Third World landfills. Apple has pledged to remedy these problems within the next few years.

by MacNN Staff