Greenpeace Criticizes Apple's 'Daisy' Recycling Robot, Says Focus Should be on 'Repairable and Upgradeable Product Design'

[kingtj]

Exactly! I can't take anything seriously that comes from that group. Extremism is a waste of rational people's time, no matter what form it takes.

You could complain about ANY product ever made, saying if it was engineered to last longer, it wouldn't need to be recycled so often or discarded. So what? With technology products especially, they evolve quickly. That's the nature of them. Nobody is content to say, for example, "I'll stick with the speed my CPU and video card runs at for the next decade. There's no good financial reason for me to discard the computer before that and buy a newer, faster one. Intel and AMD should just stop researching new products so quickly!"

Nothing is ever good enough for Greenpeace. They criticize everyone.

 

[DHagan4755]

As someone who has the ACMT and ACiT, Apple has made repairing their hardware harder than it should be.

 

[alphaod]

I personally don't really care about what Greenpeace thinks about anything.

 

[0248294]

And they're absolutely right. Recycling is great and all, but keeping products in use for longer would be even better. But Apple will just keep flying their eco-banner everywhere while making their devices more and more disposable. Such is their business model.

 

[NachoGrande]

It is a tremendously wasteful model.

 

[dannys1]

I couldnt' care less about "upgradeability" I buy what I need at day one.

I'd argue with repairability, just because you can't do it yourself doesn't mean it's not repairable at all - Apple will do it and as long as they're recycling the broken parts properly I don't see what's wrong with that.

Also Apple stuff retains value so a lot of less of it ends up in landfill, unlikely Dells and Asus stuff which is junk after 3-4 years and mostly just gets binned.

 

[Mr_Brightside_@]

Who else did a double take because the spokesperson's name is also Cook?

 

[ActionableMango]

Isn't Greenpeace supposed to be stopping Seal Culling?

Aren't they supposed to be busy going after Japanese whalers?

Who "supposed" that they only to do that? Is it inconceivable to you two that a group might do more than one thing?

 

[0248294]

I couldnt' care less about "upgradeability" I buy what I need at day one.

I'd argue with repairability, just because you can't do it yourself doesn't mean it's not repairable at all - Apple will do it and as long as they're recycling the broken parts properly I don't see what's wrong with that.

Also Apple stuff retains value so a lot of less of it ends up in landfill, unlikely Dells and Asus stuff which is junk after 3-4 years and mostly just gets binned.

Heh, three years into my ASUS laptop and I'm still doing fine. Should the 8GB of RAM prove to no longer be enough, I can simply buy a 16GB kit and I'm off to the races again. There once was a time Apple did the same, they have no excuse.

 

[kingtj]

Overly simplistic thinking there.

With servers for example, they're left running 24 hours/7 days by necessity. Newer generations of them use FAR less electricity than older models. At some point, discarding the thing makes more environmental sense than letting it burn huge amounts of power, doing the same tasks a newer system could accomplish even faster while using a lot less energy.

Heck, even with the Mac Pro, this is the case. The 2006/07 model draws hundreds of watts to run the dual Xeon CPUs in them. I recently saw a guy who attached a kill-a-watt meter to his 2006 Mac Pro that he had upgraded with Clovertown CPUs. He was re-purposing it to run VMWare ESXi server, but discovered it would increase his electric bill by about $50/month leaving it on all the time. A workstation or server with a generation newer of Xeon CPUs, by contrast, would cost him maybe $15/month to run, doing the same thing.

Can't believe the negativity here towards Green Peace.

They are 100% correct. Recycling is only the best of the worst options.

Emphasis on reducing ALWAYS trumps recycling.

 

[FrenchRoasted]

I can't believe I agree with Green Peace, what's going on here? And the hate from the usually liberal Macrumors crowd, it's an upside down world we're living in.

 

[Doomtomb]

This is fair criticism. Apple has cleverly championed robot disassembly of an iPhone as innovation, when clearly, the product has been designed so that ONLY a robot can disassemble and replace parts the way everything is glued together these days.

 

[BuddyTronic]

Nothing is ever good enough for Greenpeace. They criticize everyone.

Exactly. Greenpeace thinks they know something about how it should be done? Does Greenpeace ever admit it when they are making a mistake? Has Greenpeace ever misjudged something?

Very stupid for Greenpeace to comment on technology in this way. They lose my respect just for what they say about Apple here - so what's that worth to you Greenpeace?

Greenpeace - know this - I won't be donating to Greenpeace in 2018 because of these negative comments against Apple.

 

[cmichaelb]

Who "supposed" that they only to do that? Is it inconceivable to you two that a group might do more than one thing?

I'm sorry but they are a bunch of whiny hippies.

 

[ActionableMango]

I'm sorry but they are a bunch of whiny hippies.

I'm not sure how that relates to my point at all. An organization can't do more than one thing if it is a bunch of whiny hippies?

 

[djcerla]

“Repairable and Upgradeable Product Design”

That no-bo-dy would ever buy.

 

[Thunderbird]

Nothing is ever good enough for Greenpeace. They criticize everyone.

Just like MacRumors members.

 

[FrankieTDouglas]

Why would anyone ever give legitimacy to anything Greenpeace ever says?

 

[Thunderbird]

Nothing will ever be good enough for Greenpeace because that would render it irrelevant and dry up its fundraising.

Greenpeace is all about perpetuating the problem to stay relevant or the inadequacy of the solution to stay relevant. It’s not about solving the problem.

You missed the part where Greenpeace regularly gives Apple high marks for most of their other environmental initiatives.
No matter what Greenpeace says or does, nothing is ever good enough for you.

We get it, you hate Greenpeace, you hate the environment, you hate anyone who dares to criticize Apple.
[doublepost=1524170643][/doublepost]

Why would anyone ever give legitimacy to anything Greenpeace ever says?

Because they have a good track record of being right.

 

[Plutonius]

How will Tim get into politics if Greenpeace is mad at him ?

 

[drewyboy]

Nothing is ever good enough for Greenpeace. They criticize everyone.

Typical attacking the messenger as a way to distract and discount the message. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised on an Apple forum, yet given the audience is typically all about environmentalism, I find it somewhat hypocritical that you criticize them.

 

[ChrisA]

They are 100% correct. Placing a solar panel on the office rooftop looks good but does not un-do the harm caused by building "throwaway" non-repairable products.



Just think what would happen if Apple made stuff where the parts could be replaced, two things would happen:

1. We could continue to use our iPhones, iPads, and Macs for twice as long before trashing them and
2. Apple would sell only half as much stuff.

It is pretty obvious why Apple does what it does.

 

[blacktape242]

already have two phones going!

 

[SoN1NjA]

Not to sound like a jerk but having everything "upgradable" and "repairable" is utterly unrealistic. Electronics get smaller, faster, higher density, and thus, non-user repairable. Imagine if thumb drives were required to be user repairable, they'd be enormous. Or same goes for storage, we wouldn't have flash drives.

Technology evolves.

Well of course not everything can be upgraded and repaired easily, but things shouldn't be so out of reach that it's impossible, making it easier to replace the display or battery would be a very good first step

 

[Heltik]

Yeah, good luck with that... Unfortunately, it's the capitalist business model. If they kept the same chassis and allowed upgradability of existing components, it would prevent them selling "innovation", and there would be reduced need to upgrade phones. Most people seem to buy the latest and greatest simply to have the "wow" factor of the latest tech... Or more pathetically to not have the "social stigma" of being seen with outdated hardware.

In terms of Samsung only having 1% renewable compared to Apple's 100%: Samsung, Please Copy Apple!!

 

[BaltimoreMediaBlog]

You paid for the damn robot with your OLED decaying organic $1000+ iPhone Xs.

Now shut up and enjoy it! Play with the robot damnit Timmy! Chop Chop!