
Apple Removes Green Electronics Certification From Products - rkudeshi
http://blogs.wsj.com/cio/2012/07/06/apple-removes-green-electronics-certification-from-products/
======
ghshephard
Gruber ranted about the iFixit's blog article on the difficulty of recycling
the new Retina MacBook Pro on at least a couple podcasts - the implication
being that the iFixit guy didn't really know what he was talking about with
regards to the recycling element.

Let's see if he comes forth with a mea culpa, now that Apple is as much as
admitting that their newer models just aren't easily recyclable - otherwise
why else would they be pulling the EPEAT certification from their products?

~~~
MaxGabriel
I think Gruber's response was pretty compelling: Apple will recycle any
PC/Mac/Phone/iPod at their store or by mail free of charge.
<http://www.apple.com/recycling/>

~~~
ghshephard
Following your link, I see that Apple contracts with "Sims Recycling
Solutions" to recycle their computers.

Here's what Sims has to say about the new Apple Systems:

""Sealed units [like the iPad] make it difficult to remove the batteries,"
Steve Skurnac, president of SIMS Recycling Solutions, said in a statement.
"From a recycler's point of view, the hazardous components [like batteries]
need to be easily separated or removed.""

If Apple is contracting with third parties to recycle systems, and those third
parties don't know how to recycle the glass with an adhesive on it - then
there is an issue. [Edit - In their interview, iFixit called out in particular
the difficulty separating the battery from the Retina MacBook Pro case - the
same concern of the President of Apple's recycling company.
[http://ifixit.org/2884/apple-ditches-green-standard-cuts-
off...](http://ifixit.org/2884/apple-ditches-green-standard-cuts-off-federal-
agencies-from-apple-products/)]

I just think Gruber (a podcast that I listen to, so it's clear where my biases
lay) should have given a bit more credibility to Kyle Wiens. The iFixit guys
know a lot about the material elements of hardware, and he did take the time
to contact people in the recycling industry before making his comments.

~~~
taligent
I find this sealed argument a bit strange.

In most cities there are shops that will replace cracked screens, do basic
damage repair etc on iPads, iPods, iPhones etc. They seem to manage just fine
with the units being glued.

I am guessing the issue is purely a cost one.

~~~
lambada
When replacing a part the glue poses no issue. But recycling a part is
different. The glue that is bonded to the glass etc can be difficult to
remove, as is claimed above. Full removal is necessary to ensure the recycled
product is not contaminated.

Moving beyond that, this raises the cost of recycling the glass, which in turn
raises the cost of buying the recycled glass. This makes it a less attractive
deal to manufacturers than new glass, thus giving companies less incentive to
process the glass with glue.

~~~
ams6110
All things considered, who really cares about the glass. Glass is not toxic.
Throw it in a landfill. The batteries are what you want to get, that's where
the nasty stuff is. And what kind of glue are we talking about? Something so
strong that you can't pry it apart? Seems kind of unlikely, but I don't know.
I'd imagine something more like a semi-flexible rubber cement.

~~~
dunham
I believe the batteries are the big problem. With respect to the glue, ifixit
reports:

 _Electronics recyclers need to take out hazardous components such as
batteries before sending computers through their shredders, because batteries
can catch fire when punctured._

 _When we originally tore down the Retina MacBook Pro, we could not separate
the battery from the upper case. The next day, after a lot of elbow grease, we
were finally able to get them apart—but in the process punctured the battery,
leaking hazardous goo all over._

They are fairly practiced at taking things apart, including delicate and
glued-together equipment, so I'd conclude that it is a fairly strong and
difficult to work with glue.

see: [http://ifixit.org/2884/apple-ditches-green-standard-cuts-
off...](http://ifixit.org/2884/apple-ditches-green-standard-cuts-off-federal-
agencies-from-apple-products/)

Also see their teardown for a description of their initial, failed attempt to
detach the batteries:

[http://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/MacBook-Pro-15-Inch-Retina-
Di...](http://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/MacBook-Pro-15-Inch-Retina-Display-
Mid-2012-Teardown/9462/3#s36209)

~~~
Someone
iFixit evaluates for repairability, not for recyclability.

For example, on [http://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/MacBook-Pro-with-Retina-
Displ...](http://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/MacBook-Pro-with-Retina-Display-
Teardown/9462/1#s36209) they state " To complicate matters further, the
TrackPad cable lies underneath the battery. Attempting to pry the battery off
the upper case could easily sever the fragile cable, which would be bad." That
is of no concern when recycling the device.

So, is there a problem recycling these new devices? I would guess so, but I do
not rule out that there is a simple process to separate these parts, e.g. by
heating them to a certain temperature, putting them in a microwave just long
enough, or by taking apart the battery before removing it from the glass. A
dedicated recycler could use some specialist procedure for recycling these
things. I do doubt that that would be economically feasible, though. The
amount of glass involved is just too small.

Also, chances are that that will lead to lower degree of recycling, just as
white glass can be recycled better than green or brown glass, and as car
windshields, being layered with some plastic, can be recycled, but likely not
into new car windshields.

~~~
ars
> by heating them to a certain temperature, putting them in a microwave just
> long enough

Are you kidding? You want to do that to a Lithium ion battery?

~~~
Someone
Why not, as long as that 'certain temperature' is well below the temperature
at which the battery spontaneously ignites? Also, for recycling, one could
deplete the battery before trying to separate its container from the other
parts.

I still think these things will get recycled into low-quality stuff such as
concrete filler, but as I said, I do not rule out that there is a relatively
easy way to separate the parts that iFixit does not know about.

~~~
ars
That would work fine in a lab, but is way too expensive for recycling.

Those ovens with accurate temperature control and very expensive, and pretty
small. And manually hooking up each battery to a discharging station is far
too complicated to do in bulk.

You don't need to recycle anything at all as "concrete filler" sand works just
fine.

~~~
Someone
Yes, sand works fine, but there are at least two reasons to use other stuff:

\- to give the concrete a different look

\- to get rid of junk aka recycle stuff that does not have other uses.

Some links: <http://www.concreteideas.com/recycled-glass-in-concrete>,
<http://www.jnphillips.com/greenshield.asp>

------
jws
I had a look at EPEAT. It is possible that Apple just doesn't want them as a
design partner.

There are thousands of design tradeoffs to be made in a laptop. Is EPEAT
willing to update and republish their rules every time a manufacturer finds a
better solution that doesn't comply with the rules? The guidelines seem to
track well with 2000 era PCs and cell phones.

From what I can see (EPEAT does not make their guidelines available without
payment, there may have been something useful in their Resources section, but
I'm finding broken links to third party file sharing sites) they have a set of
categories that are required and some that are optional. By how many optionals
you meet you get a bronze, silver, or gold rating. Apple marketing can't
tolerate anything but a gold.

The guidelines I see don't have flexibility to them. For instance, if you can
reduce your glass consumption by 50% by gluing it to something that can
acceptably be chucked into the glass recycler, that may be a better
environmental decision, but it may also be forbidden by EPEAT.

EPEAT says things need to be taken apart with "common tools". Does the
pentalobular screw head count? I doubt it. Even if Apple sends pentalobular
screwdrivers with each pallet of computers to the recycler it doesn't count
for EPEAT.

~~~
joe_the_user
Uh,

 _" It is possible that.."_ , _"I see don't"_... _"may be a better ...
decision"_... _"The guidelines I see"_... _"I doubt it"_

Your claims are a long stream of unsupported speculation.

Rather than speculate, we can consult the article. The article mentions that
the guidelines were developed with Apple's input. The article sources a couple
people who noted that the recent MacBook Pro was mostly unrecycleable.

And the "something" which the screen was glued to is the _battery_ and given
that batteries are major source of toxic waste, it is hard to imagine how a
smaller battery or screen might be a desirable trade-off for the battery's
toxic ingredients entering the environment.

Edit: re-reading the article, the situation is that the screen is glued to the
case and the battery is glued to the case. Effectively the same result: '“If
the battery is glued to the case it means you can’t recycle the case and you
can’t recycle the battery,” Frisbee said.'

~~~
jws
I'm not inclined to consider the article as especially authoritative. It is
mostly echoes from blog posts collected into a story.

 _…guidelines were developed with Apple's input…_ In what year? Half a decade
ago? A decade? You can not simultaneously innovate better manufacturing and
make things the same old way.

People need to stop being in a glue tizzy. I'm sure that in a recycling
context the glue can be undone with either heat or a chisel. And remember that
Apple has a plan in place to replace those batteries.

I suspect the story we are not seeing is that EPEAT is not willing to update
the standard fast enough to adapt to modern manufacturing. And they probably
shouldn't. Apple will be secretive until release, and EPEAT should take some
time to think about things. Those just aren't going to work together.

~~~
georgemcbay
"I'm sure that in a recycling context the glue can be undone with either heat
or a chisel."

Every decision impacting recycling has to be viewed with labor costs factored
in.

Virtually every recycling victory we've seen in the corporate sector in the
past decade or two is due to efforts to make the recycling process cheap
enough that the loss is negligible (and in the best cases, recycling is even
profitable).

Nobody is saying that gluing things together makes them completely
unrecyclable, but that glue could _easily_ be the difference between a
recycling company actually recycling parts vs throwing them in the landfill
due to increased costs blowing the economics of recycling out of whack (if
cost of recycling is significantly larger than cost of throwing item in the
landfill, the item is almost certainly going in the landfill).

This is exactly the situation EPEAT was set up (as mentioned, with Apple's
input) to watchdog over, and Apple is clearly now putting spectacular hardware
design above any green/recycling factors. Whether or not that is a terrible
thing is a personal choice to make, but you seem kind of fanboyish in your
efforts to pretend like Apple's decision is somehow EPEAT's fault.

Accept that you prefer computers that are now actively non-recyclable and move
on.

~~~
jws
That's 40 cents worth of scrap aluminum. I'm not seeing a plausible argument
for labor rates making it landfill.

~~~
ars
It's far too dangerous to put either heat or a chisel anywhere near a Lithium
ion battery.

So, yes, it's completely unrecyclable.

~~~
jws
Depending on the chemistry lithium ion batteries are safe to up to 400°F or
more. Surely the manufacturing engineers pick a thermo adhesive with a melting
point between the maximum operating temperature and the maximum safe storage
temperature.

Think about the iPad 2 screen glue. Glass glued in place, but a hair dryer is
more than enough heat to release the glue.

~~~
ars
"Depending on the chemistry" is not a valid answer when recycling something -
they don't have time to lookup the specs of each battery.

[http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/lithium_ion_safet...](http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/lithium_ion_safety_concerns)
says maximum temperature of 265°F, which is very very close to the temperature
needed to melt the glue (250°F, for low temperature glues, and 380F for high
temperature glue - which is very close to even your 400° number.)

------
mmackh
Just for clarification purposes: EPEAT certification requires certain
standards that make the machines easy to disassemble and recycle using common
tools.

------
SoftwareMaven
I'd like to see more info about this. If true, it's very disappointing, but I
could also see it being a case where government regulation has failed to keep
up with a changing industry. It _may_ be just as possible to recycle an Apple
product today as last year, but I won't believe Apple, I won't believe Gruber,
and I won't believe the first guy at the WSJ who is "grabbing a scoop".

As is typical in the media, I'm left with very few trustworthy sources.

~~~
eridius
As the story itself says, Apple offers recycling programs. I don't
particularly care about the ease with which I could disassemble my own laptop,
since I'm never going to do that, and as long as Apple is willing to recycle
the machine for me I'm happy.

~~~
soupysoupysoup
According to what NatGeo and a few others dug up (literally) Apple hardly
recycles anything. The glue alone makes recycling an impossible task. They
ship most of it off in containers to be sold in India, Pakistan, and
Indonesia, where the lower castes and children strip out the precious metals
by burning or cooking (highly toxic, but easiest way to remove the glue) or
scraping the components by hand. The plastic and glass remnants are dumped in
available spaces.

And before anyone says the glue is a new thing, _try_ to take apart a PSU from
a Powerbook.

~~~
earl
Do you have a link? If you're right I'm really bummed.

edit: I can't really find details on apple's site and I'm tired. This site [1]
discusses apple's recycling, though since it isn't apple proper I'm not sure
it's authoritative. The relevant details appear to be:

    
    
       Apple's recycler for non-Apple product recycling is WeRecycle!, a certified 
       e-Steward.  Certified e-Stewards are recyclers who have been audited by an 
       accredited auditor, and found to be conforming to the rigorous e-Stewards 
       standard.
       If you are using Apple's trade-in system, this is a different vendor, called 
       Power-On. Power-On is not an e-Steward (and they don't disclose their 
       recycling partner), so this trade-in program therefore does not benefit from 
       independent auditing to high standards.
       
       However, Apple has a very strong policy regarding responsible recycling of 
       e-waste, stating that all e-waste collected in their programs is handled in 
       the same region in which it is collected (and therefore not exported to 
       developing countries). They prohibit use of prison labor for recycling, as 
       well as incineration and landfilling of e-waste.
    

So that sound reasonable, but it would be much better if there were a direct
statement on Apple's site.

[1] [http://www.electronicstakeback.com/how-to-recycle-
electronic...](http://www.electronicstakeback.com/how-to-recycle-
electronics/manufacturer-takeback-programs/apples-takeback-program/)

~~~
soupysoupysoup
Look up e-waste in general and you'll find more than enough to read..

The difficulty is always in chasing these companies around following every
step and verifying they actually do as they claim. Typically, unfortunately,
and especially where expenses without profits are concerned, they don't.

The other problem is now they've made the product this much _more_ difficult
to recycle and far more toxic. _Somehow_ , however it happens, huge volumes of
Apple's incredibly popular products continue to end up discarded in places
where they should not be, and when the "recyclers" get them, the glue,
especially the glued batteries and glass, will be a big nasty problem.

NatGeo has done a few programs, and this larger feature discusses the big
picture: [http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2008/01/high-tech-
trash/ca...](http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2008/01/high-tech-
trash/carroll-text)

This photo gets a lot of circulation when the topic of e-waste comes up,
largely because of the recognizable brand.
[http://marketingheart.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/waste-
chin...](http://marketingheart.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/waste-china.jpg) To
be fair nobody knows how the keyboard got there. But it makes a point, it's
there, what happens next..?

~~~
taligent
We aren't talking about e-waste in general.

We are talking specifically about Apple. What evidence do you have that Apple
is knowingly letting children be exposed to toxic materials. It's a HUGE claim
to make.

~~~
droithomme
Aside from e-waste, "Apple is knowingly letting children be exposed to toxic
materials" was established with the iPhone screen cleaning story, where hexyl
hydride, which evaporates faster than alcohol but is extremely toxic, had to
be used to shave mere seconds off the assembly line speed.

[http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/may/07/chinese-
workers-...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/may/07/chinese-workers-
sickness-hexane-apple-iphone)

The Apple factories are notorious for hiring underage workers.

<http://news.cnet.com/8301-27083_3-20032074-247.html>

These findings have been covered in Apple's shareholder report, so it's not
like they can be contested.

[http://education-for-
solidarity.blogspot.com/2012/01/apple-r...](http://education-for-
solidarity.blogspot.com/2012/01/apple-report-reveals-child-labour.html)

> Apple found more than 91 children working at its suppliers last year, nine
> times as many as the previous year, according to its annual report on its
> manufacturers.

> The US company has also acknowledged for the first time that 137 workers
> were poisoned at a Chinese firm making its products and said less than a
> third of the facilities it audited were complying with its code on working
> hours.

~~~
eridius
There's no such thing as an "Apple factory". Apple doesn't own factories. And
Foxconn makes products for more companies than just Apple.

------
dshep
My recollection is that Apple has not compared very favorable with their
competitors in this respect for a while now. And now that their products are
becoming increasingly difficult to repair/disassemble, perhaps the strategy is
to bail now rather than face even poorer ratings in the future?

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
Even without structural changes, the new Apple has never been environmentally
friendly. They "design for the dump" and bring out new versions every year,
and quickly obsolete old versions.

~~~
jacobolus
In my personal experience, Mac computers tend to last much longer than their
Windows counterparts. For example, my parents continued to use a Mac SE they
bought in 1989 until about 2005, and I know several people who continue to use
8–10 year-old Mac laptops. My last two Mac laptops have each lasted 4–5 years,
and the one I’m typing on is still going strong.

I don’t think a reasonable evidence-backed case can be made for your
implication that Mac laptops are designed to be obsolete more quickly than,
e.g., HP, Dell, or Toshiba laptops.

~~~
novalis
"I don’t think a reasonable evidence-backed case can be made for your
implication that Mac laptops are designed to be obsolete more quickly than,
e.g., HP, Dell, or Toshiba laptops."

Just more obsolete than all the laptops that can be serviced and upgraded
without the same restrictions. I wouldn't go lumping all of the models from
all of those makers and settling for a blanket statement like that because
that reads false just by picking one model that passes the conditionals, just
one per any given maker.

In the end it is a choice and some will try to sugar coat that choice with
whatever makes them feel better about it.

But if you have to imagine a given brand tops the lot because you "don't think
a reasonable evidence-backed case can be made", when it clearly can, that
speaks lots about brand engadgement from your part as a customer and not much
else to the merit of that brand, and stand for the ethics behind it.

~~~
krrrh
There are piles of evidence that Apple's computers have a longer useful life
than a typical PC if you look for it. For instance, comparing measures of
installed base vs market share. Here are a couple of links. If you put some
time into it, you can find more going back to the 80s and 90s:

[http://arstechnica.com/apple/2010/03/mac-os-x-north-
american...](http://arstechnica.com/apple/2010/03/mac-os-x-north-american-
installed-base-almost-11/)

[http://www.roughlydrafted.com/RD/RDM.Tech.Q1.07/9E601E8E-2AC...](http://www.roughlydrafted.com/RD/RDM.Tech.Q1.07/9E601E8E-2ACC-4866-A91B-3371D1688E00.html)
(cmd-f for "Mac vs PC Life Span")

~~~
novalis
By your own provided links, and some third party information on the subject it
should be considered that;

The second hand market for such a highly valued brand is a factor that
improves real product life cycle. Also, access to said premium priced devices
and user brand entanglement tend to slant device usage past its prime.

Pc's (mostly corporate windows machines) tend to be cycled at higher rates,
and that has to do with finantial arrangements linked to fiscal incentives.
This data will slant any analisys that doesn't account for this specific
motivation.

I was just showing how the premise presented by the poster didn't hold up if
only one single model per poster referenced brand showed positive.

So, machines that can be serviced and upgraded without the same restrictions,
in comparison, will have expanded usage life cycle. This is parallel to your
provided information but doesn't become mute by its introduction, it does
however make good thinking points on the amount of waste we currently
produce...

------
Tichy
I'm sure our handy friends in Africa will find a way to pry even Retina
MacBooks apart with their bare hands.

------
guscost
Well, I have more respect for Apple now, and still none for Greenpeace.

