Those rainbow warriors/whiners/heroes/potheads/charlatans (pick whatever makes you tick) from Greenpeace have released their new Guide to Greener Electronics. There have been plenty of changes compared to last year, with many manufacturers going, but others going down. Nokia is now at the top, near the 7/10 mark, but Nintendo keeps crashing miserably at 1/10. What about Greenpeace’s archenemy Apple? Despite their latest efforts, it keeps failing and drops to the 14th position. It seems they are not impressed by Apple’s latest green ads:
Greenpeace is dead set on giving Apple and Steve Jobs an inferiority complex. With one hand, the environmental group patted Apple on the head after the unveiling of its redesigned MacBook aluminium notebooks. With the other hand, however, it managed to knock Apple down a peg or two for still not doing enough to save the environment. “Compared to where Apple was before Tuesday, its laptops are definitely better. That in and of itself is a good thing. But not all toxic pieces have been eliminated yet,” said Casey Harrell, Greenpeace International’s toxics campaigner. If Apple were a person, we imagine this is the point where he or she would run away, or go goth at the very least, because they’d “never be good enough” for Greenpeace.
Congratulations, Sony Ericsson, for winning what was ultimately a barely challenging competition to become the greenest electronics company around. Our favourite Swedish-Japanese conglomerate rose to the top of Greenpeace’s Greener Electronics Guide by exceeding Energy Star requirements, making all its models PVC-free and banning the most harmful chemicals from phones launched since January 2008. Unfortunately, it was valedictorian in a class whose scores have plummeted all around.
We know that Greenpeace don’t really like games consoles. We know that they don’t care much for Nintendo too. But it looks like they now have a good reason to hate on the gaming consoles after they pulled the controllers apart and found toxic chemicals inside.
Although they recognised that each of the consoles had avoided or reduced certain individual hazardous materials, they still found traces of hazardous compounds like bromine and phthalates.
Disturbingly, some of the compounds in your Xbox 360 and PS3 are known to “interfere with sexual development in mammals: including humans and, especially, males.” Which is surely going to become the number one excuse for gamers who don’t have girlfriends.
While none of the toxic chemicals found inside your console is ever going to make you sick, it’s not going to help the environment when you trash it for the next generation consoles.
Hit the link for the full report from Greenpeace.
You’re probably familiar with Greenpeace’s complaints about Apple’s “greenness” its computers, but you would think that the latest environmentally-minded decisions in the MacBook Air would have been enough to satiate the eco-group. Nope. Here’s what they said about the new Air.
Never one to take a PR opportunity lying down, Greenpeace is fashioning the hooplah over its goose-eggs for Nintendo on its green company survey into even more media fodder. (And we’re covering it!) Its latest gamer attention-grabber is Clash of the Consoles, a site that ranks the big three on their greenness with hokey, popcorn-y copy (“Master Chief won’t be winning any green battles with lame recycling and big power use sucking down his energy score”) and pretty much rehashed info from the green company survey. But, they’ve got fun form letters for you to send your company of choice begging them to go green!
For consumer electronics companies, going green (and vocally so) is the new going Apple white, though Apple’s only halfway on the train. Greepeace’s sixth guide to greener electronics tells us just how well they’re doing. They’re a bit nutty, but they are using definite criteria in this survey. Topping the list are Sony Ericsson, Samsung and Sony—not so surprising. Shocking: Nintendo’s dead last, the first “global brand” to net zeros across the board. Does Greenpeace hate Nintendo more than Apple or something? No, Nintendo just gives out zero information about any of their policies or practices with toxic chemicals or green plans. Hence, FAIL.
This morning we published allegations by the bromine industry claiming that Greenpeace’s report on the iPhone was inaccurate and alarmist. Tom Dowdall, Greenpeace International’s Web Editor, contacted Gizmodo to present a rebuttal against those allegations and talked about our coverage:
Apple has answered the Greenpeace Corporation claims about iPhone’s hazardous substances. An Apple spokesperson told Macworld that, “like all Apple products worldwide, iPhone complies with RoHS [Restriction of Hazardous Substances] , the world’s toughest restrictions on toxic substances in electronics. As we have said, Apple will voluntarily eliminate the use of PVC and BFRs by the end of 2008.” In other words, “Greenpeace, TFSU until the end of 2008.” Meanwhile, the Center for Environmental Health in California has joined the media whoring fest and gave Apple a 60-days legal notice since they want to “encourage the manufacturers through a negotiated settlement to reduce the use of these chemicals.” Obviously, they missed Jobs’ memo about the “voluntarily elimination” of said materials. [Macworld]
Greenpeace has slammed Apple once again on environmental issues, claiming that scientific tests they arranged uncovered hazardous chemicals in the iPhone. I’m sorry, but I have a hard time believing that Apple is the only phone maker that has these toxic chems, considering that the plants that iPhones are built in also make Nokias and Sony Ericsson phones too. Apple doesn’t just say “Hey, put this poison in phones”—They’re just a high profile target of these treehumping-nazis. At least take the entire industry to task if you’re going to do something like this. And require that no Greenpeace workers and volunteers ever use another mobile phone again, or any oil in their boats, or any gasoline in their car as they drive to their treehouses. I’m not saying they’re wrong, but we’re all a part of this, and unless they have a fix, like some hemp circuit boards, I don’t want to hear it. [Edited to rant by BLam]
