Apple is putting a lot of emphasis on its “green” initiatives lately. But is it the real deal?

For example, Apple’s new energy efficiency page says that because 53 percent of Apple’s greenhouse gas emissions are a result of the power its products consume, it’s designing these products to be as energy efficient as possible employing three strategies to reduce energy consumption: more efficient power supplies, components that require less power, and power management software. Every new Mac is claimed to meet the strict low-power requirements of the Energy Star specification.

However, the operative questions are how much does “green computing” matter to consumers, and whether corporate marketing of “green” IT devices amounts to more image-spinning than substance.

Only the Bare Minimum?

Some critics, such as MacNewsWorld’s Rob Enderle accuse Apple of doing the “barest minimum necessary” to justify its “green” claims — indeed less than its major competitors, but viewed pragmatically that’s a sensible approach because based on his research into the matter, in Enderle’s view Apple’s customers mostly don’t care. Is that an accurate assessment, or exaggeratedly jaundiced? After all, environmentalist poster boy Al Gore sits on Apple’s board of directors.

Enderle claims that Apple tried to ignore green computing entirely until the eco-activist organization Greenpeace began relentlessly slagging the company as an environmental foot-dragger and laggard.

Addressing Apple’s Environmental Footprint

Apple’s website highlights several key areas in which it’s addressing its environmental footprint, citing engineering innovations such as the unibody MacBooks, whose light, fully recyclable housing is sculpted from a single billet of aluminum, and the lightness of the current iMacs which contain less than 20 pounds of materials.

Apple also claims to be at the industry forefront in eliminating toxic chemicals, such as arsenic, brominated flame retardants (BFRs), mercury, phthalates, and polyvinyl chloride (PVC) from its products.

Cupertino has reduced packaging bulk, and, somewhat questionably in my view, bundles fewer peripherals with its systems, which arguably has some minimal environmental benefit, but also saves Apple a fair bit of money while diminishing value to the consumer of what is a premium-priced product.

Diminishing Value for Minimal Environmental Benefit

For example, the new WallStreet PowerBook I bought in 1999 came with video, Ethernet, and modem cables and a decent hard copy manual. To connect the unibody MacBook I bought this year to an external monitor I need one of several varieties of Mini DisplayPort adapters, have to supply my own Ethernet cable, was obliged to buy a USB modem, and documentation amounted to a quick start pamphlet. Environmental sensibilities notwithstanding, I don’t perceive this as progress.

Apple’s claims of cleaning up its environmental footprint act do have substance in terms of operational energy consumption. One reason using laptops has long appealed to me is that because they must be able to operate on battery power, they’re engineered for energy efficiency. However, even Apple’s mass market desktops have very decent energy consumption profiles these days, with iMacs reportedly using about as much energy as a 60-watt lightbulb, and Mac minis substantially less than that.

How Much Does the Average Mac-buyer Care?

But how much does the average Mac-buyer care? I’ve been almost exclusively a laptop user for the past 13 years, but even back when I used desktops, I almost always shut them down if I would be away from the keyboard for a half-hour or more. My observation was that most people were inclined to just leave their computers up and running all day, and even in many instances all night as well.

My inference, not only in the context of personal computers and other IT devices, is that while people like to think of themselves as being “green” and environmentally conscientious, their resolve tends to flag quickly when reducing their personal environmental footprint begins to involve more than minimal inconvenience and/or significantly increased cost, so that for many a commitment to “greenness” is heavier on politically correct rhetoric and feel-good exercises that let one imagine they’re “doing something” virtuous to save the planet with empty symbolic gestures rather than substantive behavior changes, like, say, taking fewer showers or washing clothes less often, or shutting off (or sleeping) their computer when not using it.

A Pew Research study found the average North American’s definition of what constitutes “necessity” these days includes a car (91 percent), washer (90 percent), dryer (83 percent), home air conditioning (83 percent), microwave (68 percent), TV (64 percent), car air conditioning (59 percent), and home computers (51 percent). Substantial minorities also included cell phone (49 percent), dishwasher (35 percent), cable or satellite TV (33 percent), and high-speed Internet (29 percent), and a few even considered a flat screen TV (5 percent) and an iPod (3 percent) “necessities.”

Am I being overly cynical? How much do Apple’s and the other computer-makers’ green efforts impact your buying intentions and user behavior?

In the latest example of Apple going green, the technology company has launched a revised and expanded web site, Apple and the Environment.

While the company, to date, has largely focused on reporting the environmental impact of its manufacturing processes, the updated site also examines Apple products over their entire life cycle, including consumer usage. In conjunction with the site launch, Peter Burrows of BusinessWeek reports on Apple’s effort to change the “terms of debate” over the environment.

For Apple, that debate has often been with Greenpeace. The environmental organization’s periodic reports on the green efforts of technology companies have often graded Apple poorly. In the BusinessWeek article, Steve Jobs was his usual candid and caustic self, saying that “I thought Greenpeace was being very unfair with us at the beginning, and that they were using us to get visibility.” While that may be true (I think it is), more objectively, one of the many problems with the methodology Greenpeace uses in its reports is that it takes into account future commitments as well as actions in the present.

Another issue Apple has with some green rankings is the exclusive focus on the operations of a company, often without even taking into account the environmental impact of the products. Jobs likened this to “asking a cigarette company how green their office is.” To that end, Apple is coming clean on its true carbon footprint, and it’s a big one.

For Apple, that’s 10.2 million tons of carbon emissions annually, more than half the the company’s total output. In contrast, HP and Dell, both far larger companies in terms of manufacturing and numbers of products sold, report smaller emissions totals. For HP, that’s 8.4 million tons annually, while Dell reports a seemingly miraculous 471,000 tons. Of course, neither company counts the emissions totals of products in the hands of consumers, and that is a big deal. Apple’s decision to report those totals “could completely change how companies are evaluated,” according to Alexandra McPherson of the environmental group Clean Production Action.

Of course, it remains to be seen whether Greenpeace will give Apple credit where credit is due. After all, how much publicity can Greenpeace get from badgering a beleaguered company like Dell?

Greenpeace released the 12th edition of its Guide to Greener Electronics today (PDF), with Apple falling somewhere between tangerine and burnt orange. For those who take the rating seriously, Apple scored 4.7 out of 10, unchanged from last time, though the company slipped from 10th to 11th place in the ranking of 18 companies.

The guide is based on three “demands” (their word) by Greenpeace: eliminating toxic substances, e-waste recycling and energy usage. Those demands are then broken down into four sub-demands, which are ranked: bad, partially bad, partially good, and good. Overall, Apple scores mostly in the middle, but with several bad grades.

The single, wholly positive ranking Apple receives is for the timeline on phasing out nasty PVCs and BFRs from manufacturing. As Apple and the Environment notes, “Printed circuit boards, electrical components, mechanical parts, and internal cables are BFR-free and PVC-free.” However, Greenpeace even takes issue with that claim because Apple has “unreasonably high threshold limits for BFRs and PVC in products that are allegedly PVC-/BFR-free.”

Greenpeace criticizes Apple strongly on e-waste recycling, while at the same time noting the company has extended coverage of its recycling program to Asia, and that Apple has set a goal of a 50 percent recycling rate by 2010. The main problem, according to Greenpeace, is a matter of disclosure on the part of Apple. On the issue of energy, Apple again scores poorly. First, because the company does not report on GHG (greenhouse gasses) emissions, Apple fails. Second, because the company does not report on renewable energy usage, Apple fails.

If you don’t see a pattern here, what it comes down to is that Greenpeace grades companies on words as much as action. Apple is a secretive company by nature. Considering how confrontational Greenpeace has been with Apple in the past, it’s hardly a surprise that Apple makes no effort to meet the “demands” of Greenpeace.

The real question here is why Greenpeace focuses so much on Apple. Both Dell and HP sell far more computers than Apple. Both have dropped in ranking, according to the latest guide, and both now score lower than Apple. Does this mean we will see protestors at the headquarters of HP? Will there be advertising campaigns about a “yellow” Dell? If Greenpeace followed its own guide, that’s what should happen.

However, the difference between Apple and every company in the guide is brand. Apple is easily the most popular brand. By focusing on Apple negatively, Greenpeace can theoretically threaten Apple’s brand popularity. Further, any changes Apple makes because of pressure from Greenpeace could then be leveraged against companies that actually pollute more than Apple. Finally, attacking the most popular company raises awareness of Greenpeace itself, not that the environmental organization would ever be so self-serving.

Keep going green, Apple, but keep going without Greenpeace.

Yesterday we covered Apple’s seemingly automated rejection of a new Tweetie update, which has thankfully since been reversed. It must’ve been a no brainer once they realized what they’d done, especially since, while using Wordbook last night, I found I was able to search for, find, and have a computerized voice speak any profanity I could imagine, so long as the filter was off in the app’s settings.

I was also made aware of a second rejection yesterday, this one actually less of a rejection and more of a revocation after the fact. The app in question in this case is A Real Tree (iTunes link), which we covered when it was initially released. Mokugift, the people behind A Real Tree, contacted me explaining the situation, and it provides some rare insight into how Apple deals directly with iPhone developers. As a bit of background, A Real Tree is an app that is used to help plant trees in areas hurt by deforestation. You purchase the app, they plant a tree. Simple.

In the email, Mokugift’s representative describes how Apple called them a week ago to inform them that A Real Tree would need to be altered or would be removed from the App Store. The reason given was that a new policy was in place prohibiting apps from claiming to do anything beyond themselves, and that any and all applications related to charity were also no longer permitted. According to Apple, this was clear from the SDK agreement, though a search by Mokugift couldn’t produce any such reference in that document.

Not only that, but when asked for a written copy of the new policy, the Apple rep stated that they were only allowed to communicate it over the phone. In other words, they couldn’t commit anything to paper, where it might get out to the newsmedia and circulate. The shyness went even further, according to our source:

This person even declined to email us from an Apple email address to confirm that he worked for Apple. We wondered if this was legit, so we called Apple and asked for him via the front desk. He answered, so as far as we know he works there, but he won’t confirm his role nor this unwritten policy.

The conditions Apple gave in order to keep A Real Tree in the Apple store were to remove any reference to planting any actual trees, which is basically the entire point of the app. Mokugift was given until March 10 (yesterday) to comply, otherwise the app would be pulled. As of today, the app is still available, but there is no description associated with it.

Mokugift would like to continue helping the United Nations Environment Programme, but they’re at a loss as to how to convey the purpose of the app without stating that they will plant a tree for every app sold. They’d like our readers to offer suggestions as to how to get around the limitation. My own idea? Encourage users to write reviews which describe the app’s functionality, so at least it will be visible somewhere on the app’s page in iTunes.

Pretty sure we didn’t need another example of why the App Store review process is broken, but we got one anyway. Has me really hoping the Cydia Store pans out.

The iPhone is a lot of things to a lot of people. You can control your home, buy movie tickets, track projects, play games, and more. Now, you can also use it to help the environment. A Real Tree, a recent addition to the App Store, offers users a chance to use their iPhone or iPod touch to give back, in what could be the first in a wave of charitable apps.

Mokugift, the developers of A Real Tree, designed their application to stand in stark contrast to the much-publicized I Am Rich application, a vanity app which offered no utility and carried a very high price tag. A Real Tree also offers limited utility, in terms of adding functions to your iPhone, but that’s where the similarities end. The app is inexpensive, costing only $0.99, and it is designed not to show your wealth or massive ego, but instead your generosity. Using revenue generated by app sales, A Real Tree plants real trees in areas significantly threatened by deforestation, making it possibly the most appropriately named application available in the App Store. There is a one-to-one ratio of app purchases and trees planted, so the idea is simple…you buy the app, they plant a tree.

The real purpose of the app is clearly the real world tree planting, but it does have some features as well. Starting A Real Tree results in an animation of a tree growing, and then brings you to a screen where you can click a Safari link to view the existing forest. Mokugift tracks purchases of the app, and displays a running total of trees planted on their website, along with a visual map of where the real world trees are planted. The countries that receive trees bought through the app’s sales are Belize, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, Cameroon, Ethiopia, Burundi, Senegal, Zambia, India, Philippines, and Haiti. Each is located near the equator, in tropical regions where deforestation has the most significant effect on global warming. Clicking on the tree image on the app’s home page will also start a short animation of a bird flying in and around the tree. Mokugift promises additional features in future updates.

The model is simple, and has shown some early success (nearly 100 trees have been planted so far), so it could attract the attention of similar organizations. LIVESTRONG.COM previously released their Calorie Tracker app, but it’s designed to simply heighten brand awareness, whereas A Real Tree is attempting to actually generate charitable revenue. The iPhone/iPod touch platform is a good place for this sort of thing for a couple reasons. First, overhead is low. Developing a simple iPhone app and submitting it to the App Store is not expensive, especially when compared to the cost of things like mailing and door-to-door campaigns. Second, iPhone/iPod touch users are a good demographic to go after, if you’re looking for charitable donations. They’re more likely to have disposable income, and as we’ve recently seen, they’re generally comfortable with marketing on their devices, and with buying and downloading applications of all kinds. Let’s hope A Real Tree begins a trend of socially responsible iPhone/iPod touch development.

A Real Tree is $0.99 in the App Store.

With their latest lineup of products, Apple is pushing the new environmental features in an aggressive way. Rightly so, they are proud of their achievement — going from a heavily criticized Mac and iPod lineup a few years ago, to a set of very environmentally friendly products today.

Their environment page states, albeit in a typically corporate way, a commitment to creating ‘green’ gadgets:

Apple recognizes its responsibility as a global citizen and is continually striving to reduce the environmental impact of the work we do and the products we create.

The new U.S. ad campaign was launched on Monday night, and is coupled with a new page on the Apple site providing more environmental information. Not only is it the first TV spot Apple has released heralding environmental progress with their products, but it marks the start of any major campaign for the new MacBook lineup.

The Achievements

Some of the features of the new MacBooks which Apple is pushing include:

• Arsenic-free glass
• Brominated flame retardant-free
• Mercury-free
• PVC-free
• 41% smaller packaging
• Highly recyclable aluminum and glass enclosures

While Apple has been praised by many for the progress with their notebook line, work has still to be done on their lineup of desktop machines. Any mention of the environment is suspiciously absent from their iMac and Mac Pro pages. I’m confident that the next incarnations of these products will be promoted in the same way, marking the transition of Apple’s whole line to environmentally friendly materials (no doubt coupled with a glossy press photo showing each machine with a nature-themed wallpaper).

Advertising Focus

This new advert raises the topic of what product features Apple has a history of pushing in advertising. Recent campaigns have focused around the Mac’s superiority to Vista (and, judging by the number of “I’m a Mac” ads created, this is faring well for them). iPhone ads have similarly focused on the sheer range of features available in the software.

It’s difficult to judge exactly what consumers demand in a notebook, but I would think that the ground-breaking features in OS X have a great deal more advertising sway than pushing the environmental aspect of new MacBooks. I’m sure the new ads will compel some people to make the switch to Mac, but I don’t think they’ll be running on a long term basis.

The Latest TV Ad

This is a video of the latest TV advert, promoting a selection of environmental features in the new MacBook:

Do you think this is a wise route for Apple to take with their ad campaigning?

Along with all the other technology that Apple announced today, there was quite a bit of time devoted to showing off the innovative manufacturing process in the new 15″ MacBook Pro. Previous versions of the MacBook Pro were made from pressed aluminum parts held together with screws and fitted with plastic gaskets to cover the seams. The new MacBook Pro enclosure is milled from a single “brick” of aluminum. This approach allows for a seamless enclosure with no visible screws and a few other innovative features.

Apple is referring to this new approach as a unibody enclosure. They employ CNC machines to carve the unibody from a solid block of metal that starts out weighing 2.5lbs and ends up as a .25lb top enclosure. The other 90% of the original piece is recovered during the manufacturing process and recycled to make new aluminum blocks. The result is a thinner and lighter enclosure that is simultaneously stronger and stiffer.

The aesthetics are affected as well. Gone are the screws along the side and the opening for the sleep light to shine through the case is actually perforated by laser so that it’s virtually invisible to the naked eye. The only breaks along the edge of the new MacBook Pro are from the various ports on the left, the superdrive slot on the right, and the IR port on the front.

The screws holding the top case and the bottom together are found along the back edge and underneath the new access door along the front. The new access door covers the battery and the hard drive. The battery is not part of the bottom case anymore and is entirely covered by the access door. Because the battery is otherwise covered by the access door, the battery indicator lights are visible through perforations in the side of the enclosure. This gives the new MacBook Pro a very clean look along the bottom as well.

Improvements to the manufacturing process go beyond the new unibody construction. Apple has also dropped a number of harmful chemicals by using LED backlighting (no Mercury) and removing BFR and PVC from the logic board, cables and connectors. The unibody enclosure also means fewer extraneous bits and pieces to hold the enclosure together that would have gone to a landfill before. The packaging has also been reduced by 37%, which means less paper products and decreased environmental impact from transportation. The significance of all these changes is a new laptop that is almost entirely recyclable and has earned the highest rating of EPEAT Gold.

Consumers may be perceiving Apple as a more ecologically friendly company than they actually are, according to a new report by marketing research firm TDG.

Results of a survey of randomly selected participants found that roughly 30% believed Apple was the most environmentally friendly tech brand, with Dell and HP the next most popular choices, at 21% and 15% respectively.  The results are somewhat baffling, since Apple does not do nearly as much as some other companies to paint themselves as a so-called “green” company.

Survey participants were also just plain wrong about Apple.  While it has recently improved its standings in Greenpeace’s “Guide to Green Electronics,” it still falls behind Dell and HP based on the environmental organization’s comprehensive ranking system.  In the inaugural study in August of 2006, Jobs’ baby scored a paltry 2.7 out of a possible 10.  September 2008’s results saw Apple’s score climb to 4.1, which is still behind LG, Toshiba, Dell and HP.  Apple was listed as having improved in some categories, but still isn’t quite up to snuff on energy management and recycling.

So how does Apple get to be the greenest without actually getting the best scores or engineering their image through huge green-specific ad campaigns?  According to the author of the TDG study, Michael Greeson:

Chalk it up to effective marketing and the brand’s aura of simplicity in both design and usage.  In today’s market, aesthetics in branding and design matter when it comes to portraying a pro-environment message. Independent of whether Apple’s products and services are actually environmentally friendly, consumers perceive them as such. While other CE vendors may have to invest a fortune to improve their green image, Apple doesn’t seem to have this problem.

In other words, Apple’s branding seems to be subtly, inherently green.  It’s true that consumers tend to to cluster environmental responsibility with contemporary, clean, simple brands.  Apple is perhaps the best example in computer electronics, but Ikea demonstrates the same effect in the home furnishing sector.

When marketing trend analysts, and even some environmentalists, are forecasting an end to the effectiveness of green marketing, Apple may represent the green company of the future.  Commercials with voiceovers about carbon emission reduction are beginning to fall on deaf ears, but a company that appears casually environmental seems to strike a chord with those resistant to the in-your-face approach.  So how best to capitalize on this consumer misconception?  Bottom line is that Apple should just continue doing what they do, offering more services like iPod battery disposal and reducing their ecological footprint, but without showing off.  It’s the “Meh” approach to green marketing, and it sure seems to beat wrapping everything in bamboo.

Flipswap is a service that allows you to send in your old phone for free and get paid for it. They send your old phone to another country where someone less fortunate will be able to use it (while also covering shipping both ways). They will put your phone in a happy place:

If your cell phone is in working condition or can be repaired, we make sure it goes to a place where it can be reused. If your cell phone is broken beyond repair, we recycle it using the most environmentally friendly methods currently available.

It is a better deal than just tossing out your old phone.

In addition to finding a new owner for your phone, Flipswap will also plant a tree for each phone donated, so you can feel more environmentally conscious!

So how do they figure out how much your phone is worth? A complicated algorithm “that allows [them] to offer you a real time trade-in value for any phone.” My three cell phones added up to about $50, which is not bad considering they are old and partially beat up.

So whether you are done with your first iPhone and gearing up for the 3G, or you just want to get rid of your regular cell phone, you can use this and maybe get some more money to add to your 3G fund.