City of San Francisco Will No Longer Buy Apple Products

Re:City of San Francisco Will No Longer Buy Apple Products by greedo on Wednesday July 11, 2012 @10:17AM (#4229264)

If you want your Apple products to be "properly recycled" then take them to Apple when you EOL them. Relying upon a shiny EPEAT logo/cert to make your decision easier is ignoring that there are other ways to be environmentally friendly.

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Re:City of San Francisco Will No Longer Buy Apple Products by Spooky23 on Wednesday July 11, 2012 @10:38AM (#4229369)

Why should I change my business process to make Apple more money? I'm not hauling thousands of devices to Apple -- particularly if I can save money by using any of a half dozen competitors.

I have contracts with a half dozen recycling vendors who take my junk and dispose of them in a manner deemed acceptable by us. Some of them even pay us to take certain products.

A "shiny EPEAT certification" means that I can call any of the thousands of recycling vendors in the United States and get my gear hauled off and disposed of in a sustainable and ethical manner, and at a reasonable price. No African children are smelting wires from equipment originating from my company. Memory from my Dell devices is recovered and resold. Batteries from my Thinkpads are dissembled and recycled.

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Re:City of San Francisco Will No Longer Buy Apple Products by greedo on Wednesday July 11, 2012 @02:47PM (#4230715)

So you perform audits of the recycling firms that you use?

I get the impression from the tone of your reply that even if Apple were to continue achieving EPEAT that you still wouldn't buy them.

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Re:City of San Francisco Will No Longer Buy Apple Products by greedo on Friday July 13, 2012 @02:41PM (#4241210)

Oh, and following up on this because of Apple's change of heart in paying EPEAT for approval. Are you going to change your purchasing policy now?

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Re:City of San Francisco Will No Longer Buy Apple Products by jlgreco on Wednesday July 11, 2012 @10:33AM (#4229342)

I am unknowlegble on this topic; what do we know about how they recycle their equipment? Recycle is not a binary option, there are different amounts that something can be, which is also different from how much it is.

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Re:City of San Francisco Will No Longer Buy Apple Products by div on Wednesday July 11, 2012 @11:17AM (#4229593)

Exactly. Recycling could be marketing speak for "sending to a landfill in China".

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Re:City of San Francisco Will No Longer Buy Apple Products by greedo on Wednesday July 11, 2012 @02:48PM (#4230723)

And this could be true of lots of "recyclers" in the US and EU.

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Re:City of San Francisco Will No Longer Buy Apple Products by wwweston on Wednesday July 11, 2012 @01:25PM (#4230203)

So we should rely on a glowing Apple logo to make our decisions instead?

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Re:City of San Francisco Will No Longer Buy Apple Products by greedo on Wednesday July 11, 2012 @02:49PM (#4230731)

No, but relying upon outdated recycling standards instead of evaluating devices and doing your own research is sloppy.

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