Green Wombat

Steve Jobs’s green manifesto is bubbling about the blogosphere and much is being made over whether  (AAPL) waived the white flag under pressure from a Greenpeace campaign, which labeled the company an ecotard – as Fake Steve might put it – for its past "failure to take a green initiative."  Of much more interest to Green Wombat than the pissing match between Jobs and the enviros, or the not-so-veiled jabs he made at rivals, is how Apple has raised the bar on environmental disclosure. Ironically enough, given Jobs’s obsession with keeping secrets, he detailed the amount of various toxic chemicals present in Apple’s computers and iPods and disclosed future manufacturing plans to remove them. Of course, all this served to show that Apple, despite its previous opaqueness, is greener than its competitors. Still, for all the press releases issued by Dell (DELL), Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) and Sun Microsystems (SUNW) trumpeting various environmental initiatives, few have discussed in detail such topics as the arsenic, mercury, cadmium and hexavalent chromium content of their products and specific plans to eliminate the chemicals. For instance, Jobs said Apple will begin to sell mercury-free Macs this year that use LED backlight technology for their screens and will also begin using arsenic-free glass. And he revealed that Apple phased out the use of some hazardous materials in recent years thanks to innovative design. Jobs pledged to completely end the use of others by the end of 2008. Apple has been slammed for its e-recycling polices and the fact that its flooding the planet with millions of iPods that will soon be discarded for the latest model. Jobs said the company this summer would expand its free take-back policy at U.S. Apple stores to all outlets worldwide. He also noted that Apple makes its computers with high-quality materials in demand by recyclers. "Few of our competitors do the same."

"We apologize for leaving you in the dark for this long," Jobs concluded, promising to provide updates on the company’s green deeds, including an examination of its products’ carbon foot print. "Apple is already a leader in innovation and engineering, and we are applying these same talents to become an environmental leader."  Coming from another company that might just be a standard-issue feel-good line. If Jobs’s becomes as obsessive about the environmental design of iPods and iPhones as he does their look, feel and function, then other consumer electronics makers are about to face some real competition on the green front.

Why Apple left increasingly eco-conscious customers unenlightened about what appears to be years of work to remove toxic chemicals from its computers and gadgets remains a public relations strategy best plumbed by bloggers like David Swain at Clean PR.