Apple, News/Rumors July 16, 2012

Apple Rejoins EPEAT’s Registry

Due to the rough criticism received and to the controversy concerning the banned products in San Francisco, Apple decided to rejoin EPEAT’s list of environmentally friendly products.

Few weeks ago Apple has decided to withdraw all 39 models of desktop and laptop computers from the list of the Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool, claiming that EPEAT’s standards cannot cope with Apple’s standards and does not cover all their devices.

Bob Mansfield, Apple’s senior vice president of hardware engineering, announced last Friday in a letter that the Cupertino Company will relist its products on the U.S. government-backed registry of environmental friendly products. The federal government said that it is mandatory for a device to be EPEAT certified, thus, Apple had no choice but to relist its product in order to avoid sales ban.

In his letter, Bob Mansfield felt the need to explain Apple’s decision of withdrawing the devices and the fact that EPEAT does not measure its progress and also the reason for which the Company cancelled its decisions:

“We’ve recently heard from many loyal Apple customers who were disappointed to learn that we had removed our products from the Epeat rating system,” he said. “I recognize that this was a mistake.”

Also, according to Mansfield, as an aftermath of this controversy, the relationship between Apple and EPEAT has become stronger than before.

Source: The Wall Street Journal