How green is your technology?

APPLE IS ONE of the least environmentally friendly companies on the planet. Well, at least according to a Greenpeace survey for big brands. Its products, and the company, just scored one of the lowest scores possible on the Greenpeace Scorecard which judges companies on recycling, the use of hazardous chemicals in products and their take-back policies.

See Greenpeace slams Apple.

Frankly, when I heard it first I was surprised and somewhat disbelieving. Apple, vendor of choice to arty/creative/liberal/save a dolphin set? No way. A quick Google search and a visit to Greenpeace showed the rumours to be true. Then, obviously, I felt a little bit smug and pleased. I'm not proud, but it's true. You see, the Apple image portrayed to the world is of an innovative, young (ish), hip maker of innovative, hip, sexy products for socially aware and eco-friendly young people that run on beaches, with scruffy - yet perfect - hair and hang out with their mates in open-top cars laughing and swapping iTunes. There has always been this 'holier than thou' stance taken by Apple, which usually came off as:

"We are better than you PC peasants because we invented most of the cool GUI software before Microsoft nicked it and made it popular. Oh yeah, and our products are mostly white - which makes them sort of divine, and they are more expensive - which makes them better, obviously, and there are less of them - which makes them more exclusive and so more attractive to a higher class of eco-friendly geek."

See? Holy. As for users, there's no doubt that Apple users are somewhat fanatical about their chosen technology icon - and to be fair, why not? After all, Apple makes good sh**.

Except for the fact that, environmentally, it's bad sh**. Out of a possible score of 10, with 10 being a Green Goddess and 0 being down there with Chinese car makers, only Acer, Motorola and Lenovo did worse. To be fair, Lenovo shouldn't have really bothered showing up, scoring a miserable 1.3. At the top end of the scale, Dell (another surprise) came out tops with Nokia, with 7 points apiece. Apple scored 2.7.

Of course, green counts little when it comes to the decision-making process of most buyers. In fact, neither do exploding batteries. You may think that's not true but here are some sobering facts. On the day that Apple announced a recall of 1.8m notebook batteries, its stock price rose 50c. Various pop-surveys over the week that followed The Great Flaming Battery Recall by Dell and Apple showed that nearly everybody said they would still buy a notebook from Dell or Apple. No one was all that fussed.

Will they be put out by a poor Greenpeace survey? Call me cynical, but take one buyer faced with two similar notebooks from Dell and Acer, with the key difference being that the Acer one will save that buyer £200. Obviously, the green choice is Dell but the fact is that in the buyer's head, it's hard to get past all those dancing green pound signs. If a global battery recall and rubbish green ratings do nothing to dent a company's popularity, then little will.

So, I decided to see how green was my technology and I was somewhat - er - dismayed to report that far from being green, I seem to be cultivating a weak radioactive glow. Not Chernobyl or anything, but enough to get me around the house at night in the dark without bumping into anything. Here's how it stacks up:

Phone: Motorola. Scored a miserable 1.7 on the scorecard. And to think my old Nokia was a green star. My wife has a Nokia, does that count?
Notebook: Sony. Scored 4.7 - below par. While happy that it hasn't burst into flames yet, I must assume that the scorecard did not take into account the dodgy 5.9m Sony-manufactured batteries. Backup-PC: Dell - 7 on the scorecard. Woo-hoo, a winner. Glad it's green, but would have been happier with a product that worked better.
MP3 player: While glad it's not an Apple device, since its rating is so low, I must admit that as a no-brand, cheap device from somewhere in the non-regulated Far East, it probably scores somewhere from 0.1 to 0.3 on the scorecard.
Surround sound system: Sony: that glow is starting to intensify.
Kitchen stereo: Sony - are you seeing a trend here?
Overall score: Not bad, for a nuclear power station. Must try harder.

Do you want to know how you fare on the Greenpeace Scorecard? Are you a Tree Ent or an atom bomb in sneakers? Go here. µ