Stupid San Francisco

Written by

Erica Ogg:

Just days after news hit that Apple no longer wants its computers and monitors evaluated for EPEAT certification, the first public agency has said it will no longer be allowed to buy Macs as a result.

Instead of looking at a certificate, why not visit Apple’s environmental Web site and see what the company is actually doing with its products to help the environment.



  • http://twitter.com/pberry Patrick Berry

    Because that would require somebody taking a risk. If you go by a checklist you’re “safe”. Or it would require trying to gain some sort of exception saying it was okay not to just go by the certificate. Too much risk or too much extra work and things like this will happen.

    It should be noted that SF has a long history of “stupid”, especially if you follow any of the fine folks running bars and night clubs in the city. Specifically I am referring to the War on Fun: http://www.stopthewaronfun.org/

    If anybody else reads jwz’s blog (owner of The DNA Lounge and the guilty bastards the unleashed Lucid Emacs upon the world) this story would not surprise you in the least.

  • Brian

    San Francisco is committed to remaining on the bleeding edge of bureaucratic ignorance.

  • http://papermail.me/ Jacob Penderworth

    No, stupid Apple. This is actually their fault for not being under EPEAT anymore.

  • deviladv

    So before this announcement I had never even heard of EPEAT… and I consider myself to be somewhat knowledgeable.

  • Steven Fisher

    This is how stupid policies change.

  • http://twitter.com/Moeskido Moeskido

    Not a surprise, given Apple’s trend towards non-disassemblable gear. I’ll go out on a thin limb here and guess that most coverage of this issue won’t mention the fact that Apple itself will recycle old Macs or iPods and pay for the shipping.

    http://www.apple.com/recycling/

  • Lukas

    Yeah, let’s look at a company’s PR and ignore the fact that they can’t get an official certification anymore, because their new products are so glued together that they can’t be easily taken apart anymore.

    I’m sure Apple will take them back and “recycle” them, but do we actually know what exactly that entails? Which parts do they recycle, and which do they just throw in a landfill? Does anyone actually know?

    • http://twitter.com/colinmat Colin Mattson

      As Jim said, yes, we do know, because it’s on Apple’s environmental web site.

      In a nutshell: “With materials reprocessing and component reuse, Apple often achieves a 90 percent recovery rate by weight of the original product.”

      They even have the meat of their extremely stringent recycler contract available to read.