“The fact that I flew here [The World Business Summit on Climate Change] to sit on a panel for one and a half hours, then I’m flying straight back to the US, is an example of our commitment to environmental sustainability”

Indra Nooyi, CEO of PepsiCo, 2009

Greenpeace tested five popular brands (Acer, Apple, Dell, HP and Sony) for toxic chemicals such as brominated flame retardants (BFRs), polyvinyl chloride plastic (PVC) and lead and found that HP and Apple were the worst offenders^[2]. As a result, Greenpeace have launched a new site which mocks Apple’s own, urging people to contact CEO Steve Jobs and ask him to reduce the amount of these chemicals used in Apple’s laptop production, as well as asking for Apple to offer and promote a “take back” recycling program for all their products.

Why only target Apple?

This seems to be the issue most Mac-heads have with the campaign. Apple were not bottom of the list after all (although they were not far off) and they only recently moved to a 12% market share^[3] so why single them out?

I would have thought this was obvious but if not, just try and answer these questions off the top of your head:

• Who is the CEO of HP?
• Can you name a specific model of HP laptop?
• Name a bulletin board and rumour site solely devoted HP products

Apple tell people to “Think Different”. They market themselves as being something special in a PC world dominated by banality and mediocrity. In terms of PC product design they unarguably lead the world. They are something special. In environmental design, they’re exacly the same as everyone else. The internals of a MacBook Pro are effectively indistinguishable from the latest ‘Brand X’ laptop. Intel inside, hazardous materials inside.

Greenpeace simply want Apple to apply this ‘different thought’ to their use of toxic chemicals. They’re acknowledging that Apple are different, and recognising Apple as the company most likely to make a positive difference. If Apple do this, others will follow.

Take back

The one thing I find odd is Greenpeace’s request for a “take back” recycling program. I find it odd because from what I can see on the Apple website, they already do this. Are Greenpeace missing something?

* * *

What remains to be seen is how Apple respond to this. I’m hoping Apple will work with Greenpeace to remove, wherever possible, these toxic chemicals from their products and take the lead in producing greener solutions. It seems to me that they’re already doing more than other PC manufacturers in this area, but clearly there is a long way to go.

Reducing chemical usage is a step forward, but it isn’t a long-term solution. A better approach would be for Greenpeace to start lobbying these companies to work towards a more sustainable PC design as well. If we could send our computers back to the manufacturers after a couple of years to have the CPU or motherboard replaced whilst keeping all other components intact, we could greatly extend the lifetime of PCs, significantly reduce e-waste and save a heap of cash at the same time.

Mighty oaks from little acorns grow.

• [1] Toxic Chemicals in Computers, Greenpeace 2006.
• [2] The Green Electronics Guide, How The Companies Line Up
• [3] Apple Laptops Take 12% Of The Market, MacObserver July 19th 2006

One of the reasons I started Lylo was so I could work for a company which had an ethos I believed in and environmental awareness has always been high on my agenda. Over the coming weeks I’ll be publishing a few short articles detailing how we are trying to operate as a sustainable company to the best of our abilities. We might be small, but this can’t stop us leading by example.

Web Hosting
This site was previously hosted in London but now it’s coming at you from the sci-fi-sounding, sun-drenched Romoland, California. Our new hosts, AISO, are a forward-thinking company with a commitment to “fighting pollution and preserving our natural resources”. They achieve this by using a dedicated grid of solar panels to provide all the power and light their offices and data centre require. They’re effectively off-grid, but they remain connected to keep the business running in case of emergency. You can read more about AISO’s services here.

There is a growing number of eco-friendly web hosting companies out there, the majority of who operate like any normal host (i.e. powered by the national energy grid) but with a guarantee that all the energy they consume comes from renewable sources (in the form of ‘energy credits’), such as Think Host and Elfon. Some, like AISO, take that commitment one step further by producing their own power.

All these ‘eco hosts’ represent a new movement with the aim of creating a sustainable future for the web. In time they will come to represent the norm, but it will take commitment from hosting companies and customers alike to make it happen as quickly as it needs to.

[1] A fast food leviathan, an oil company and an airline. Fully committed to the environment?

• McDonald’s
• Air Canada
• ExxonMobil

Despite looking longingly at the G4 Powerbook, I see no practical reason for replacing this workhorse for some time to come (touch wood, or, rather, composite plastic).

Lucky me. As Moore’s Law continues to hold true, a significant number of computer users wholly replace their machine, on average, every two years^[1]. Modern software such as PC games, digital photo applications and even the most popular operating systems (MacOS X, Win XP) demand powerful home computers with multi-GHz processors and 512MB RAM or more. This need for speed, combined with ever-decreasing prices and ever-increasing advertising budgets for manufacturers, makes people ditch their ‘old’ machine and upgrade.

So what happens to these old PCs? Surely people don’t take them to the tip when there are schools/hospitals/charities/small businesses which could undoubtably benefit from them? Well, sadly, in our disposable society this is not the case. We bin them.

Pollution

Not only does the ‘e-waste mountain’ contribute to our bloated landfill sites, but the pollution resulting from it, combined with the effects of the energy-intensive manufacturing process of computers, is huge. Scientists at the UN university in Tokyo have estimated that making a new computer requires 240kg of fossil fuels, 22kg of chemicals and 1,500kg of water. The Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition have calculated that microchip production involves more energy, water, fossil fuels, toxic chemicals, and elemental gases than any industry in history^[2].

“One semiconductor plant can require enough electricity to power a city of 60,000 and several million gallons of water a day.”

Given that there are over 700 million personal computers in use throughout the world^[3], and with annual computer sales running at over 170 million^[4], that’s a pretty serious environmental impact.

Resolution

So how can this waste be reduced whilst allowing progress to continue uninhibited? Recycling rather than disposing is obviously the place to start, but whilst necessary to recover valuable metals, even this can be environmentally damaging (using acid baths to strip circuitry, for example).

The best possible way forward is to make PCs last longer, which means making them easily extensible as well as expandable. Expandability has been around, to some degree, since the dawn of the PC (adding a second hard drive, adding more RAM, replacing graphics cards) but it remains prohibitively difficult to do. The average PC user has trouble understanding Office Assistant, never mind replacing a motherboard.

Surely, in the age of nano-technology, a PC can be developed which provides easy upgrade of all it’s components? I understand that we currently have chipset and bus speed incompatibilities, but perhaps these are introduced by the manufacturers for convenience or as a method of ensuring they sell more units? A combined effort between manufactures and designers could easily overcome problems like this and result in benefits for the environment and consumers alike, whilst not necessarily adversely affecting profits.

In today’s world, profit-seeking is inevitable but, like the PC waste mountain, year-on-year growth simply isn’t sustainable. It may take consumer demand, government regulation or an all-out miracle for these changes to happen, but until they do we’re facing problems as abundant as cheap PCs.

• [1] National Safety Council, “Electronic Product Recovery and Recycling Baseline Report: Recycling of Selected Electronic Products in the United States”, May 1999
• [2] Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition, “Fourth Annual Computer Report Card, January 9, 2003″. http://www.svtc.org/cleancc/pubs/2002report.htm
• [3] Source: Computer Industry Almanac. http://www.c-i-a.com/pr0203.htm
• [4] Source: http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,119347,00.asp

Links

http://www.e-waste.ch
http://www.envirogreen.co.uk
http://www.computersforcharity.org.uk
http://www.svtc.org/cleancc/pubs/sayno.htm
http://www.metro-region.org/article.cfm?articleid=5565