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Apple and Greenpeace
Greenpeace Targets Apple's iPhone
Greenpeace: The iPhone Contains Toxic Chemicals
Greenpeace blasts Apple over toxic materials in iPhone
ExtremeTech: Loyd Gets an Un-iPhone
The Tech Night Owl: Will the iPod and iPhone Be Upstaged This Holiday Season?
Apple and Greenpeace
Editor's note: I think Apple has plenty of work to do getting hazardous chemicals out of their products. As a sufferer from Multiple Chemical Sensitivities I'm anything but indifferent to this issue, and in that context Apple products gas off chemical fumes as badly or worse than other brands, presumably mostly from the internal circuit boards and other internal components, since the metal case of, say my PowerBook should be gassing-benign, but the machine still gives off enough emissions to be problematical to me.
That said, I take anything Greenpeace says with a big grain of salt. As noted in the Computerworld news-snippet below, they acknowledge that iPhone components don't appear to violate EU standards, which are probably the toughest in the world in this context. Greenpeace typically exaggerates or even deliberately misleads in its advocacy and publicity.
Case in point, I'm sure Greenpeace is well aware that whitecoat seal pups have not been hunted off Canada's coasts since 1988, yet on one of their anti-seal hunt Web pages (probably a lot more than one) they have posted, you guessed it, a photo of a winsome whitecoat Harp Seal pup with a sealing vessel in the background. All the better to pull at the heartstrings of well-meaning but ignorant and sentimental funding donors.
Incidentally, while older seals are still hunted under strict conditions and harvest quotas in Canada, no species of seal has ever been remotely close to being endangered in Canadian waters, and the Harp seal population is estimated to have at least tripled from 1.8 million in the early 1970s to roughly 5.5 million to six million today, to an extent that they are putting serious pressure on several prey species that really are endangered, such as cod fish.
CM
Greenpeace Targets Apple's iPhone
Apple 2.0's Philip Elmer-DeWitt says:
That green glow around Apple (AAPL) didn't last long. Only three days after the company gave over the front page of its website to proclaim itself "bursting with pride" over boardmember Al Gore's Nobel, the environmental activists at Greenpeace have attacked Steve Jobs for failing to make his cellphone as green as his competitors'.
In a slick video posted on YouTube (and pasted below the fold), the organization paints Jobs as a hypocrite for promising a "greener Apple" but failing to take the minimal steps that Nokia and Sony Erikson took to earn a higher rating in Greenpeace's Guide to Greener Electronics....
For the full report click here.
Greenpeace: The iPhone Contains Toxic Chemicals
Salon reports:
The environmental group Greenpeace says that it has tested Apple's iPhone for a variety of hazardous chemicals, and the iPhone failed. Greenpeace, which has long criticized Apple for the alleged toxicity of its products and manufacturing practices, found that the iPhone contained, among other bad stuff, chemicals known as phthalates, which are thought to affect hormonal levels and disrupt sexual development in humans.
In response, another environmental group, California's Center for Environmental Health, has pledged to take legal action against Apple for violating California's Proposition 65, which requires companies to attach a warning label to products that may cause reproductive harm.
For the full report click here.
Greenpeace blasts Apple over toxic materials in iPhone
Computerworld's Gregg Keizer reports:
Greenpeace International, which has clashed with Apple Inc. over toxic chemicals in its products and criticized its post-sales electronics recycling programs, today slammed the company's iPhone, saying it includes hazardous materials that other cell phone makers have eliminated.
An analysis done on a disassembled iPhone by an independent lab in the U.K. found toxic brominated compounds and hazardous PVC (polyvinyl chloride) in multiple components of the handsets. Bromine, a chemical used in fire-retardant compounds, was present in more than half of the 18 samples taken, Greenpeace claimed, while toxic phthalates made up 1.5% of the PVC coating of ear bud cables.
In no instances, however, did any of the tested iPhone components - which included the four circuit boards, the battery casing and the internal case - appear to violate European Union regulations, Greenpeace acknowledged.
For the full report click here.
ExtremeTech: Loyd Gets an Un-iPhone
"I blame Apple.
Actually, I also blame Jason Cross.
I've been toying with the idea of getting a smart phone for about a year now, but lack of time and the rapidly evolving mobile landscape has kept me from taking the plunge. But I've finally gone and done it.
It actually began with the iPhone. I actually never had any desire whatsoever to get an iPhone. Even when Jim Lynch caved in and bought one, I remained resolute. My reasons actually have little to do with Apple. It's just that I've never had any desire to hold something up to my ear that resembles a small tablet PC."
To read more, go to:
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1558,2195484,00.asp
The Tech Night Owl: Will the iPod and iPhone Be Upstaged This Holiday Season?
Now that Apple has, for all practical purposes I suppose, unleashed its holiday lineup of iPods - and there will probably not be any changes in the iPhone this year - the conventional wisdom is that Apple will move a huge number of these gadgets by Christmas.
For the full commentary click here.
http://macnightowl.com/newsletter/2007/10/14/newsletter-issue-411/#season
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Charles W. Moore
Tags: iPhone ď iPhone News ď
