Greenpeace says:
In a campaign to get Apple computer to "go organic" Greenpeace writes:Hello, I'm a Mac and iToxic
Let me introduce you to Apple’s latest release: hundreds of tons of contaminated, unrecycled products. Apple is selling you a fresh, clean image and innovative technology, but behind their messaging is a dirty little secret: their products are made with poison. That’s because under their skin, Apples are full of toxic chemicals like polyvinyl chloride plastic and brominated flame retardants.
When old Apples get tossed, they can end up at the fingertips of children in China, India and other developing world countries. They dismantle them for parts, and are exposed to a dangerous toxic cocktail that threatens their health and the environment.
All electronics have nasty stuff in them. I'm not sure why Greenpeace is targetting Apple over Dell and HP, who also have heavy PC advertising going on. The recent Dell/Apple battery recall involved batteries that were manufactured by Sony. Likewise, there are many parts, from the Intel CPUs to disk drive cables, that are manufactured by third-parties, and that may well be shared -- or at least equally toxic -- across PC dealers.
At least Greenpeace chose to e-mail me this time (despite the fact that I'd unsubscribed previously), rather than including me on a mass snail-mailing of fund-raising propaganda written in soy ink on recycled paper. The fossil fuels burned to power the CPUs involved in Greenpeace's e-mail blast, however, did add to the organization's CO2 production.
In the preface to his Ecology of Commerce, Paul Hawken writesManagement is being told that if it wakes up and genuflects, pronunouncing its amendes horoable, substituting paper for polystyrene, that we will be on the path to an evnironmentally sound world. Nothing could be farther from the truth. The problem isn't the half measures, but the illusion they foster that subtle course corrections can guide us to a good life that will include a "conserved" nature, and cozy shopping malls, ...
Proponents of socially responsible business ... are inintentionally giving companies a new reason to produce, advertise, expand, grow, capitalize, and use up resources. ... But flying a jet across the country, renting a car at an airport, air-conditionaing a hotel room, gassing up a truck full of goods, commuting to a job, -- these acts degrade the evnvironment whether the person doing them works for the Body Shop, the Sierra Club, or Exxon.
To create an enduring society, we will need a system of commerce and production where each and every act is inherently sustainable and restorative. Business will need to integrate economic, biologic, and human systems to create a sustainable methed of commerce ... where doing good is like falling off a log, where the natuaral, everyday acts of work and life accumulate into a better world as a matter of course, not a matter of conscious altruism. That is what this book tries to imagine.
Remains to be seen where he takes it from there. But thirteen years after that was published, Greenpeace is still in the business of mass-marketing feel-good half-measures. For them to criticize Apple's hip-consumer image is an excercise in irony. I concede, however, that a larger critique of the environmental potential of commerce for both good and bad is warranted.
Let me introduce you to Apple’s latest release: hundreds of tons of contaminated, unrecycled products. Apple is selling you a fresh, clean image and innovative technology, but behind their messaging is a dirty little secret: their products are made with poison. That’s because under their skin, Apples are full of toxic chemicals like polyvinyl chloride plastic and brominated flame retardants.
When old Apples get tossed, they can end up at the fingertips of children in China, India and other developing world countries. They dismantle them for parts, and are exposed to a dangerous toxic cocktail that threatens their health and the environment.
All electronics have nasty stuff in them. I'm not sure why Greenpeace is targetting Apple over Dell and HP, who also have heavy PC advertising going on. The recent Dell/Apple battery recall involved batteries that were manufactured by Sony. Likewise, there are many parts, from the Intel CPUs to disk drive cables, that are manufactured by third-parties, and that may well be shared -- or at least equally toxic -- across PC dealers.
At least Greenpeace chose to e-mail me this time (despite the fact that I'd unsubscribed previously), rather than including me on a mass snail-mailing of fund-raising propaganda written in soy ink on recycled paper. The fossil fuels burned to power the CPUs involved in Greenpeace's e-mail blast, however, did add to the organization's CO2 production.
In the preface to his Ecology of Commerce, Paul Hawken writesManagement is being told that if it wakes up and genuflects, pronunouncing its amendes horoable, substituting paper for polystyrene, that we will be on the path to an evnironmentally sound world. Nothing could be farther from the truth. The problem isn't the half measures, but the illusion they foster that subtle course corrections can guide us to a good life that will include a "conserved" nature, and cozy shopping malls, ...
Proponents of socially responsible business ... are inintentionally giving companies a new reason to produce, advertise, expand, grow, capitalize, and use up resources. ... But flying a jet across the country, renting a car at an airport, air-conditionaing a hotel room, gassing up a truck full of goods, commuting to a job, -- these acts degrade the evnvironment whether the person doing them works for the Body Shop, the Sierra Club, or Exxon.
To create an enduring society, we will need a system of commerce and production where each and every act is inherently sustainable and restorative. Business will need to integrate economic, biologic, and human systems to create a sustainable methed of commerce ... where doing good is like falling off a log, where the natuaral, everyday acts of work and life accumulate into a better world as a matter of course, not a matter of conscious altruism. That is what this book tries to imagine.
Remains to be seen where he takes it from there. But thirteen years after that was published, Greenpeace is still in the business of mass-marketing feel-good half-measures. For them to criticize Apple's hip-consumer image is an excercise in irony. I concede, however, that a larger critique of the environmental potential of commerce for both good and bad is warranted.