Over the past years, Greenpeace hasn"t been kind to Apple. It"s taken every opportunity to point out the lack of environmental concern by the company, from protesting outside Apple Stores to even setting up a stall at MacExpo. Now, however, Apple has been rated the greenest company around.
According to AppleInsider, Apple was given a 2.7 out of 10 rating in terms of environmental friendliness back in 2006, giving it abysmal scores across the board by Greenpeace. Since that report, the aforementioned actions were taken to try and get the Cupertino-based company to clean up its act, leading Steve Jobs to write an open letter in 2007, admitting that Apple needs to do some improvements. Fast forward to 2010, and you"ll see Greenpeace International Electronics campaigner Casey Harrell doing the opposite of what was happening 4 years ago – praising the company for its efforts. Harrell stated, "It"s time for a little less conversation and a lot more action on removing toxic chemicals. Apple is leading and HP is playing catch up, but the lack of action from other companies is ensuring that customers and the environment are still losing out. Companies need to support legislative bans to ensure a consistent phase out of PVC and BFRs across all electronic products. Sony Ericsson and Apple are already calling on EU institutions to support such a ban. Other big players, such as HP and Dell – who have so far been silent - and Acer, need to ensure the ban is passed in the European Union parliament."
You"ll notice now that when Apple announces new products, it takes care to detail just how environmentally friendly they are; this is, as you"ll assume, another side effect of Greenpeace"s criticism. Of course, Apple isn"t the only one doing its part to clean up the Earth, as many other companies are improving their products year over year. For the full report on how electronics makers are helping lower pollution, you can read the .PDF file provided by Greenpeace.
Update: To clarify the title, Apple has been rated greenest in terms of removing toxic chemicals from their products. The Greenpeace graph shows that the company has eliminated said chemicals from their entire line of products, more than any company, hence the headline. As Greenpeace stated, "Apple is leading the way on eliminating toxic PVC and BFRs from all it"s new products with the new iMac and MacBook being the first PC"s completely free of PVC and BFR."