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Apple Jumps to Fourth in Greenpeace's Environmental Rankings of Electronics Companies

Wednesday November 9, 2011 7:59 am PST by Eric Slivka

Fortune notes that Apple has risen to fourth place in Greenpeace's annual ranking of electronics manufacturers by environmental criteria, as published in the organization's annual Guide to Greener Electronics. Apple moved up to fourth place this year from ninth place in last year's survey, making gains in the greenness of its products and sustainability efforts in its operations, but remaining below average in its energy scores.


As noted in the report on Apple (PDF), the company does score some points on the energy front for its use of renewable energy sources, with select facilities in Texas, California, and Ireland powered by 100% renewable sources, representing 13% of the company's facility-related energy usage. Apple is also beginning work on a solar farm at its new North Carolina data center, an item unmentioned in Greenpeace's report. The most significant ding in Apple's energy scores according to Greenpeace is a lack of a stated advocacy policy for clean energy.
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elhungarian
91 months ago
Lol @ RIM
Rating: 27 Votes
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ouimetnick
91 months ago
Meh. Greenpeace.. Didn't they VANDALIZE an HP building? Very unprofessional if you ask me. Just like PETA
Rating: 23 Votes
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FFArchitect
91 months ago
Go completely green = do nothing?
Rating: 19 Votes
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66318
91 months ago

I'm a little surprised they aren't already ahead of the pack ... their consumer outlook is very green, so their corporate practices must be poor.

They get knocked down because they aren't as vocal about being green as Greenpeace would like. This is what bothers me about Greenpeace, they aren't happy until you've completely committed to their side, and spend your time preaching about it. Any less is seen as bad to them, and this attitude can push people away from the very goals they want.
Rating: 13 Votes
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840quadra
91 months ago
I would love to see greenpeace manufacture, and ship millions of devices per year, and see if they can match or better any of the companies on the list.

The fact that the companies are trying is great, and it is nice to see continued improvement for many of them.
Rating: 11 Votes
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nagromme
91 months ago
Awareness of these issues is critical. But when Greenpeace does it wrong, they hurt their own very important cause.

"lack of a stated advocacy policy”

Words ARE important. No question. But actions and reality are more important. Harder to measure, maybe but there’s no helping that!

Maybe they should have two separate scores: Best Stated Policy and Best Delivered Reality.

I don’t know where Apple would fall on the latter scale, but somewhere very high!
Rating: 8 Votes
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chrmjenkins
91 months ago

Go completely green = do nothing?


Essentially. It's not immediately clear if 10 on their scale is do nothing or do everything you can (according to their standards) to be green.
Rating: 8 Votes
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parish
91 months ago

Meh. Greenpeace.. Didn't they VANDALIZE an HP building? Very unprofessional if you ask me. Just like PETA


And back in the '70s they engaged in what bordered on piracy on the high seas (Rainbow Warrior) and they also welded shut an outfall pipe from a nuclear site at Winscale (now Sellafield) here in the UK - really intelligent thing to do NOT. So not exactly a group to take much notice of
Rating: 5 Votes
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Guy...
91 months ago


If we all do that, Aluminum doesn't get more expensive and Apple can increase their win... :D


Aluminum aka bauxite is the one of most abundant materials on earth
Rating: 5 Votes
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Milznike
91 months ago
Below Average?

Apple moved up to fourth place this year from ninth place in last year's survey, making gains in the greenness of its products and sustainability efforts in its operations, but remaining below average in its energy scores.

According to the article, Apple is below average, but that doesn't appear to coincide with the supplied graph. According to the graph, Apple is generally above average based on the peer companies shown. It's actually almost a perfect bell curve with an almost perfectly normal distribution. The only thing that doesn't make sense is why it doesn't line up with the 0-10 measurements. Is there some hidden data set that would indicate that this segment of data (shown) does not alight with the large (hidden) data set?
Rating: 5 Votes

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