Apple has just unveiled a new addition to the Environmental section of their website, baring all in a brave new stance of total disclosure. The ‘life cycle impact’ section now accounts for all of the company’s 10.2 million metric tons of carbon emissions.
Covering the entire gamut of CO2 emission culprits, including raw materials extraction, manufacturing, packaging, transportation, product usage, and recycling, Apple now seems to be transparent to the core. And looking at the core, you can see seeds of accountability deep within the flesh-white fruit. Besides already reducing packaging, removing toxic chemical substances from their products, and increasing recycling programs, Apple has taken responsibility for the end result of their commercial enterprise…hours of usage of a vast array of products by a growing amount of consumers.
Going the extra mile and adding in figures from product usage, Apple wagers on gaining credibility from divulging all, instead of suffering from a higher carbon footprint measurement than, say, Hewlett Packard or Dell. Both of these companies have admitted that they do not include product usage in their emissions data and that if they did it would boost those numbers much higher.
Because the highest percentage of emissions come from the power their products consume – 53 per cent to be exact – Apple has focused on creating machines that have greater energy efficiency. The Mac mini, for example, is the world’s most energy-efficient desktop computer, using as little as a quarter of the power consumed by a typical lightbulb. Mac OS X apparently has the ability to regulate processor activity between keystrokes, thus saving milliwatts of energy.
The second highest contributor to their environmental footprint is manufacturing, at 38 per cent. Transportation and Facilities measure in the single digits.
While no other technology company has gone to the extent that Apple has, they hope their example may prove to encourage full disclosure from their peers, believing that “it’s time for companies, in tech and elsewhere, to examine their environmental impact as broadly as possible.” Evidently, that time has come for Apple.
