Apple guns for Greenpeace
27 Oct 2006 | 07:25 BST
Greenpeace had bought a stall at the three-day expo to raise awareness about concerns over the use of toxic chemicals in Apple's products. It was asking for conference goers to sign a petition to get Apple to go green and were even handing out apples to conference goers.
All fairly harmless expressions of free speech, but anyone who claims that the business decisions of Steve Jobs are anything other than pure and holy is going to find themselves in hot water and apparently Greenpeace was no exception.
It is not clear if the complaints came from Apple, or the Apple fanboys who channel the words of the Apple PR department without engaging their brains, but Greenpeace is fairly sure the company is trying to gag them.
Alas for whoever was responsible for Greenpeace's eviction, what it did not realise is that the environmentalists have a lot of experience in dealing with governments and organisations that get a bit heavy with them and tend to raise the stakes.
Greenpeace has vowed to come back to the conference to continue its "green my apple campaign" [www.greenmyapple.org] even if an Apple fundamentalist straps a limpet mine to something.
Iza Kruszewska, Greenpeace International campaigner at the expo said Apple's reaction was totally over the top.
"Apple refuses to address our criticisms on their products, both for the recycling and for the use of harmful chemicals." Despite its clean design image, Apple scored 11th place out of 14 on a 'Guide to Greener Electronics' recently released by Greenpeace, with a poor showing on almost all criteria.
"We are challenging the world leader in design to also be a world leader in environmental innovation. We challenge Apple to have a product range on the market by 2007 which is free of the worst toxic chemicals," she said. µ
More here. µ
© 2007 Incisive Media Investments Ltd. 2007