Apple has just withdrawn its products from the EPEAT environmental evaluation program: this should mean that Apple is no longer an allowable purchase for the Federal Government. Or many educational authorities and governmental organisations in the UK, Canada and elsewhere.
The announcement is here:
Apple has notified EPEAT that it is withdrawing its products from the EPEAT registry and will no longer be submitting its products to EPEAT for environmental rating.
This might seem fairly trivial but it could have some interesting run on effects.
EPEAT itself looks at the lifetime environmental costs of equipment. How easy is it to repair for example: it is clearly greener to repair one component or replace it in the case of failure rather than insist on an entirely new machine. Similarly, at the end of life, being able to disassemble something so that each part can be treated appropriately would make something greener.
The problem with Apple's equipment seems to be in the newer laptops. Here batteries are glued in, the screen is non-replaceable and it's not possible to detach it at end of life either. Apple's kit just isn't designed to be either component by component replaceable nor easy to dismantle. Thus is most unlikely to pass EPEAT standards.
Apple's reaction seems to have been to withdraw all of their kit from consideration. That is their right of course.
However, there is a sting in this tail: in order to sell to the Federal Government you need to have EPEAT certification. As you do to sell to many educational institutions around the US. Or to government funded organisations in the UK, Canada and other places. Withdrawing from EPEAT should therefore mean that Apple has withdrawn entirely from those markets.
These standards do not apply to tablets or phones as yet: so iPad and iPhone sales will be entirely unaffected. But this could pose something of a problem for the Mac lines of desktops and laptops.
It really does look like Apple has just banned itself from these government markets.
