| Sourced From |
Apple CEO Steve Jobs, in a rare interview with Business Week, argues it’s time for a change in the method used to calculate a company’s carbon footprint.
Apple, which has been sharply criticized by environmental groups for its use of toxic chemicals, has consistently ranked below rivals like HP and Dell in the rankings of green companies. But Apple executives say the problem is in the way emissions are calculated – too much emphasis, they say, is put on companies’ green plans, rather than actual accomplishments, and the focus is on the environmental impact of a company’s operations rather than that of its products.
“A lot of companies publish how green their building is, but it doesn’t matter if you’re shipping millions of power-hungry products with toxic chemicals in them,” Jobs told Business Week. “It’s like asking a cigarette company how green their office is.”
On September 24, Apple, for the first time, published its annual corporate carbon emissions – which it calculated at 10.2 million tons. But executives say consumer use of Apple products accounts for 53% of this total, Asian manufacturing processes for 38%, and Apple’s own operations for 3%.
By way of comparison, HP puts its annual emissions at 8.4 million tons and Dell at 471,000. Neither includes product use in its calculations and both exclude some manufacturing. Both HP and Dell have admitted that including these factors would boost their emissions totals significantly.