What's Behind Apple Abandoning Environmental Standards Compliance?

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Apple on Tuesday responded to concerns that it asked to have its products removed from EPEAT, the U.S. government’s list of environmentally friendly products, as reported in the WSJ.

“Apple takes a comprehensive approach to measuring our environmental impact and all of our products meet the strictest energy efficiency standards backed by the US government, Energy Star 5.2,” Apple representative Kristin Huguet. “We also lead the industry by reporting each product’s greenhouse gas emissions on our website, and Apple products are superior in other important environmental areas not measured by EPEAT, such as removal of toxic materials.”

It’s important to note that in addition to not measuring toxins and other environmental areas, EPEAT also doesn’t measure smartphones or tablets. Clearly these are two areas that are vitally important for Apple and not covered by EPEAT.

Companies like Dell have 171 products listed on EPEAT, but yet if you look on Dell’s Web site, none of their computers are even Energy Star Compliant.

By its own admission, the EPEAT certifications are old.

“Part of it is expanding EPEAT’s global reach through the multiple certification [process]; as well as moving into new, additional products; as well as updating the EPEAT [certifications], because they’re a little long in the tooth. [Each of those] is a huge project on its own,” Christine Ervin, an EPEAT board member told GreenBiz in March.

The hubbub over Apple pulling out of EPEAT is interesting because the products that were listed as gold products by the environmental organization are the same ones Apple is currently selling.

As Loop Insidernotes, Apple has done more than any other technology company in recent memory to be environmentally friendly. What’s more, Apple publishes everything that makes up its carbon footprint on its Web site. Again, this is something EPEAT doesn’t measure.