Steve Jobs responds to Greenpeace's plea to go green.

[Dumpy Dooby]

Last year, Greenpeace wrote this about Apple:

For a company that claims to lead on product design, it is perhaps surprising to find Apple at the bottom of the scorecard – moving down from 10th place. While other laggards have moved upwards in the Guide, Apple has made no changes to its policies or practices since the launch of the Guide in August 2006. The company scores badly on almost all criteria. Apple fails to embrace the precautionary principle, withholds its full list of regulated substances and provides no timelines for eliminating toxic polyvinyl chloride(PVC) and no commitment to phasing out all uses of brominated flame retardants (BFRs). Apple performs poorly on product take back and recycling, with the exception of reporting on the amounts of its electronic waste recycled.

Today, Steve Jobs responded. It's a rarity to see Jobs personally respond to a concern regarding the company. It's a rarity for all CEOs, actually. We haven't seen something of this caliber from Jobs since his Thoughts On Music missive back in February (link if anyone cares to read that). Anyway, here's a snip-it of his letter to "some environmental organizations" (aka "Greenpeace"):

Apple has been criticized by some environmental organizations for not being a leader in removing toxic chemicals from its new products, and for not aggressively or properly recycling its old products. Upon investigating Apple’s current practices and progress towards these goals, I was surprised to learn that in many cases Apple is ahead of, or will soon be ahead of, most of its competitors in these areas. Whatever other improvements we need to make, it is certainly clear that we have failed to communicate the things that we are doing well.

It is generally not Apple’s policy to trumpet our plans for the future; we tend to talk about the things we have just accomplished. Unfortunately this policy has left our customers, shareholders, employees and the industry in the dark about Apple’s desires and plans to become greener. Our stakeholders deserve and expect more from us, and they’re right to do so. They want us to be a leader in this area, just as we are in the other areas of our business. So today we’re changing our policy.

Now I’d like to tell you what we are doing to remove toxic chemicals from our new products, and to more aggressively recycle our old products.

Here's the full text of his letter on their site: Apple - A Greener Apple



I like the idea that Apple is going green, but I think it's pretty ridiculous that Greenpeace decided to pick on Apple. Out of all of the companies in that category, Greenpeace decided to single out Apple. I think that's rather telling of Greenpeace's ethics and consideration. It's good to see that Jobs personally responded to them, though. Plus he writes so eloquently; like a woman's skirt: long enough to cover the subject and brief enough to keep it interesting.