Apple – Friend With the Environment
After an environmental laptop discussion with Dell, which had claimed that Apple misleads customers by calling its laptops “the world’s greenest family of notebook”, Apple went out in victory, as IDG News Service declared June 19, 2009.
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National Advertising Division (NAD) – Council of Better Business Bureaus, was filed a complaint by Dell, affirming Apple’s phrase denotes a broad superiority against all the producers’ laptop. In their turn, NAD investigated and said that customers could be misinformed by Apple’s claims, which were used in Internet and TV ads by changing the green tagline to “avoid overstatement”, thus generating confusion among customers, leading them to the idea that MacBooks are superior to others laptops.
Green connected to virtual? The concept of virtualization is not new to the IT’s technologies, it appeared due to two main reasons: the necessity to simplify IT and the awareness that green is good for business. To simplify IT because, as it became clear, IT appears to be too complex for most business. Virtualization provides business and IT common attributes: less hardware, reduced space demands, lower overhead for system administration; reduced energy consumption.
As it is the case of Nicholas & Company, a food distributor of 500 employee, which is established in Salt Lake City and chose to increase its computing abilities with low energy costs leveled by virtualization applications. In this way they consolidated 1,000 physical servers on 20 newer systems. In 18 months from this point on, after the transformation is finished, the utilization rates of the servers are considered to increase.
As to costs driving green push, companies realized that they can reduce carbon mark at the same time with costs savings. Controlling costs are the essential driver behind 11 of “Green IT” initiatives. The benefits they look for are: decreased electricity use, decreased operational costs and obtaining credits or refunds from local utilities and government.
Going back to NAD, evaluating Apple’s MacBooks through a standard that helps consumers to equate PCs based on their environmental impact – EPEAT rating. The standard’s ratings indicated high levels across the entire line of laptops. But there was the Toshiba’s Portege laptop brand, which had a higher EPEAT rating than MacBooks. Nad’s recommendations drive Apple to commit to being green. A company’s spokewoman declared that to Apple, NAD’s ruling was a victory, confirming that MacBooks are the world’s greenest notebook computers. Dell made no comments.
Sarah Westervelt, a spokewoman for the Basel Action Network, affirmed that Apple was perhaps the promoter that dedicated to reducing the environmental impact of its products, but at the same time she added that laptops will continue to contain toxins in their circuits, while batteries are still chemicals-based, that being damaging for health, too.
On the other hand, Greenpeace International expressed approval for Apple’s engagement to withdraw the components and circuit boards of chemicals that could damage human health. They have also approved Apple’s “green” advertising campaign that put accent on environmental impact of its PCs. High points were gained also by Apple company in Greenpeace’s ranking, thus leaving Dell, Hewlett-Packard and Lenovo behind. The conclusion that is drawn from the above: Apple – Friend with the environment is …no comment.
