EPEAT isn't mad. Apple issued this statement after Apple withdrew their products. Do you understand what actually happened and the order of events? No one is "mad." Except maybe some MR members.
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Apple Issues Statement on EPEAT Registry Withdrawal
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EPEAT isn't mad. Apple issued this statement after Apple withdrew their products. Do you understand what actually happened and the order of events? No one is "mad." Except maybe some MR members.
How many are you familiar with then? Want to elaborate? All reports I've seen on that was disasamby first and then the grinder for the guts.
Ha!
I've long ago learned that most threads develop into pointless arm-wrestles that solve nothing since most participants have picked a side and aren't changing. Back in the real world, it'd be a shame if the rMBP and Apple's subsequent abandonment of the EPEAT certification leads to others following suit - without any replacement being in place. Apple may well have had genuine reasons for the production process they chose, but that doesn't mean that every laptop should be glued-together. It'd be nice if they could work together with EPEAT/EPA, or perhaps better yet, with industry partners and manufacturers, to implement more up-to-date recycling standards and processes.
I guess it's understandable that a standards body would be slow to change. After all, who'd want to comply to a standard that could change mid-project and render a product non-certifiable even before it's released.
It would seem that Apple's dropping of the EPEAT standards is an eloquent resolution to the dilemma you note. EPEAT has outlived its usefulness, and Apple provides a means for customers to recycle their old Apple equipment.
I'm generally skeptical of the utility of government agencies addressing consumer products. The CARB standards for gasoline cans sound like a good idea; the general principle is that gas cans must be self-sealing when users are not pouring gas into the fuel tank of their lawn mowers, tractors, etc. As a practical matter, those rules are a train wreck. Virtually all of the mechanisms in cheap gas cans will break within a few months. I have found only one gas can line, the No-spill can, actually works reliably and doesn't break. Unfortunately, customers and retailers are highly sensitive to price; most retail outlets don't sell the No-spill line. When the cheap cans break, they leak fuel vapors -- often far more than the old simple cans with a separate vent.
Isn't this failure obvious to the CARB? Why don't they do something to address their unworkable rules? Unfortunately, these California rules now apply to the entire US; consumers seeking a workable product must find it on their own.
I hope that Apple conversed with the EPEAT organization to try to make their standards more workable; we have no idea what happened behind the scenes. SF's response to Apple's actions sound rather knee-jerk to me.
Who's mad? EPEAT has not made a single comment regarding Apple. Apple decided to withdraw on their own no one forced them to do anything. And what makes this whole thing more puzzling is that they withdrew ALL of their products but only the rMBP doesn't qualify under EPEAT guidelines.
No, but not being able to safely and economically dispose of the mountains of electronic junk generated each year in a country of 300 million people could be a major headache. (Or, for those of us outside the USA, rather fewer people living in a much smaller area with fewer opportunities for landfill).
A quick Google suggests that Apple are currently selling 3-4 million Macs every quarter - and that's just one manufacturer making one particular category of product, so you need to multiply that by, oh, I dunno, lots, to get the total volume of junk that will have to be disposed of in 5-10 years time. How much do you want to bet on all those companies still existing, with "bring it back to us for recycling" policies still intact, by then?
I doubt that even Apple have budgeted their recycling project for that long (and I bet the budget only assumes that a fraction of Macs will actually come back to them).
But no, let all the other companies making slightly thicker laptops worry about this - Apple should get a free pass because they're so, so pretty. Of course, then no manufacturer will want to join if it means that their laptops will always be 2mm fatter than Apple's.
Oh, and I'm sure that EPEAT would love to extend their register to mobiles and tablets if someone funded them and/or if there was demand from the 'users' of their ratings (i.e. companies and government institutions who want to be environmentally responsible). Maybe that has something to do with Apple's departure.
I replaced my old MacBook with the latest one a few weeks ago. I took out the ram and sold it on eBay and tore the hard disc out and formatted it with a hammer. Now i can bring the rest back to the Apple store to get it recycled.
I am curious how I am gonna do this with my new MacBook pro.
Now i can bring the rest back to the Apple store to get it recycled.I am curious how I am gonna do this with my new MacBook pro.
...yes, because the average consumer dismantles their laptops for recycling. riiight.
you do realize apple accepts any of their computers for proper recycling, right?
No. If you find someone to buy your equipment, go ahead and sell it to them. If, however, you want to get rid of an old Apple computer, and can't be bothered to find a buyer, or figured out that nobody is going to buy it, then you can take it to Apple, who will give you money if it still has value, and recycle it (and refurbishing would be the best imaginable way of recycling), instead of dumping it and it ending up in a landfill.
That's the thing. You can't look at the number of Apple computers sold each year and assume that is the number that ends up in a landfill. I get that you can't expect the same number to be recycled back to Apple either. But we really don't know how many are dumped, just as we don't know how many pc's are dumped each year.
My guess, and I know it's just a guess, is that far fewer Apple computers are dumped and/or recycled each year compared to any other brand pc. Regardless of whether you want to talk about some issues some Apple computers have had over the years that cost extra to repair or replace, their customer satisfaction rating has almost always been higher than other pc makers (go ahead and prove me wrong if you must, because I'm not going to dig up citations on everything I say).
And in 5-10 years, no one can say how things will be recycled. But I'm guessing it's not going to be by someone, even in a third world country, hand disassembling laptops who will complain that they can't pull the battery off of the aluminum case.
Without digging further, this is what I came up with from a few years ago regarding dumping and recycling of electronics.
3.2 million tons of electronic waste is trashed annually. This is a huge amount, especially considering that most of it can be reused in some manner. 99% of a computer is recycleable. Only 500,000 are recycled annually, a shocking number considering how many programs are in place to encourage electronic recycling.
Citations:http://www.greenstudentu.com/encyclopedia/recycling
http://www.prlog.org/10351086-saving-the-planet-one-little-computer-at-time.html
Read more: http://greenanswers.com/q/90840/rec...mputers-get-recycled-each-year/#ixzz20KSt6Bsm
If you look at Apple's website, their estimate is that 70% (by weight) make it back to Apple, compared to 20% for Dell.
autrefois
macrumors 65816
Yes, Apple was bad environmentally, then worked hard to get certified green and fortunately succeeded. Now they've announced they aren't going to try to meet the standards that until this week they were bragging about meeting. Don't you see this as a step in the wrong direction?
While (slightly) thinner computers will generally use fewer materials, if it is harder or impossible to recycle more of the components that are used in this computer, then it isn't really progress on this front.
Why not? People love the city. Don't they have the highest real estate prices in entire nation?
You can't equate Apple's recycle-ability based upon the fact that they have pulled out of a ratings system. Others have noted, Apple was bashed by Greenpeace for not having a policy regarding some toxic chemical - that other manufacturers agreed to work to reduce. So Apple looks bad - but the reality was Apple didn't have policy statement on it because they had stopped using it 2 years prior.
Are they perfect, of course not. Should they be lumped into the same category as companies that produce throw away cheap pc's? Of course not.
autrefois
macrumors 65816
Nobody cares about upgrading or servicing a $1000+ MacBook PRO? These are supposed to be professional machines, after all. Sure not everyone is going to do so, and not everyone who buys a MBP actually needs a pro machine, but they should change the name if they're really just meant as disposal consumer machines that you can't customize or upgrade (much less repair) during their lifetime.
Sure, neither is adjusting your carb to run a bit richer your already low MPG muscle car from the 60s. In fact, the environnement is much more likely to kill us and then go on to heal itself over a few million years.
Can you point to where EPEAT makes that claim ?
How can a tool be mad ? Do you have sources for this anger emenating from this tool ?
Sure they're not, but when you want to be compatible on the Web, you follow W3C guidelines. Makes life easier for everyone else writing web sites and web browsers.
Just like when you want to promote sustainability, you work with EPEAT, a tool that provides standards and good practices for that.
Again, how does being called a professional product equate to being user serviceable or upgradable? The mba I use isn't called a professional product, yet I make money using it, therefor it is a professional piece of technology for me.
I know plenty of designers and photographers who make their living using Apple computers. They're not complaining that they can't open up the case to "tweak" the computer. If something goes wrong with their Mac (which is really just a tool for them), they do expect it can be fixed and they take it to Apple to do so. The design team I used to work with is still using G4 and G5 Mac Pros (which actually happen to be the epitome of user service-able computers), but again, they're not spending any time taking them apart or upgrading them. If they function for them as is, there is nothing for them to "upgrade" or fix.
And this idea that any of Apple's products are disposable consumer products baffles me. They are, for the most part, high quality pieces of technology that do as they are intended to do. Apple doesn't expect anyone to throw away any of their products. Even the crazy iPhone upgraders (myself included) are not dumping their old iPhones into the landfill, but rather selling them or passing them down for others to use - but that's a whole other issue.
No - promoting sustainability does not mean you work with EPEAT. That's a marketing choice, not a sustainability choice. A company and a product can be significantly more environmentally responsible and have ZERO affiliation with an environmental marketing program.
And don't you think that the auto industries move from carburetors to electronic fuel injection was a good thing?
Doing so took away the ability for most people to tinker with their car (at least the fuel injection part). And it vastly improved both the efficiency and negative environmental impact that carburetors had.
So Apple changes how they do things and it pisses off those consumers who want to be able to tweak and it also goes against the policies set up for recycle-ability of computers years before.
I'm sorry, but times change.
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Gee, that is not what you were talking about, nor was it what I was talking about. It was the idea of what is considered and sold as being professional.
I never said they can't. EPEAT is a rating system that defines a given set of criteria. It doesn't define all criteria though, and it's purely optional. No one is forced to adhere to these criteria.
Never said the contrary, read the quote and answer in context again.
Couldn't be more wrong. It spawned a whole new industry :
http://www.hondata.com/
Sure, but requirements asking that local recyclers be able to seperate and sort materials don't.
They should have worked with EPEAT to update the standards if things have changed. But, if they need to use some bad stuff, then customers have the right to know.
It is one of the things that goes along with being a huge company. For one or two products, it doesn't matter. But a few million will have an impact.
It is one of the things that goes along with being a huge company. For one or two products, it doesn't matter. But a few million will have an impact.
Just the facility down the street actually. I won't claim to be an authority on electronics recycling. My point is that as the end result of recycling is the recovery of raw materials, it isn't really required for items to be taken apart neatly. Its true that some disassembly is sometimes required in order to separate certain toxic materials, typically heavy metals. However I doubt that it matters how those parts are accessed as long as they come out in one piece. Disassembly is labor intensive and therefor costly. If I can get to a mercury vapor tube more quickly by sawing the end off of a plastic case then I'm going to do it that way. It won't matter if the case is screwed or glued together.
If you want to include reuse as recycling then that's another matter.