< Green Apple (finally) / >

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A couple of years ago I sent a letter off to Apple, letting the company know that it was missing a huge opportunity to promote the environmental benefits of the iTunes Store and iPods. While arguments were (and are still) out there that the iPod was a toxic device going into landfills by the millions, Apple did have a free product recycling program for all of its products. Problem was (and is still) that Apple advertised the program by burying it in the small print of the documentation that came with new Pods and Macs. Rather than shouting the news at customers, the company conveyed details about the recycling program as a mere whisper.

My rebuttal to the "iPod Is Bad Garbage" claim was built on two basic premises: the existence of the product recycling program, and a basic comparison/contrast between digital AAC files and physical CDs, and between iPods and Walkmen or "boomboxes" or stereo recievers and CD players. In the first case, discs and jewel cases that had been made of plastic (oil) for decades were now conceptual pieces of code, and what had been bulky, multi-component, energy-sucking boxes for decades had been distilled to a single battery-powered device the size of a deck of cards.

Sure, there's a sound-quality difference between costly audiophile components and relatively inexpensive iPods, even with a Bose SoundDock to enhance things. And yes, it takes electricity to power the servers hosting the iTunes Store tracks, as well as the desktop and laptop computers at millions of homes that are buying those tracks. But in the photo above, the home system has seven separate components — each of them plugged in and most likely kept that way for instant-on. Recharging an iPod or a laptop, or even powering a basic desktop computer, will win the energy-saving trophy over the components easily.

Even with all of those benefits, the Apple site still buries the word, "Environment," in tiny print at the bottom of the home page:
But in other ways, the company is finally starting to realize what it has. Its new lineup of MacBooks star on their own page under the banner "The World's Greenest Family of Notebooks," and a much more visible link to "environment" on that page leads to the company's overall policies and commitment to green technology. And now, for the first time, Apple's running a TV ad that actually sells product specs — green ones — rather than just flash, cool, and image.



Of course, I'm not claiming that any of this change came from my solitary letter of 2007. But I do think that Apple received a lot more than just one letter, and more importantly, that it's been listening to what people were saying. Now if GM can be convinced that letting a 14-mpg pickup burn Flex Fuel and get 12 mpg on the corn isn't innovation, we'll be getting somewhere.
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