SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Apple is offering free recycling of
all its used products and vowing to power all of its stores, offices and
data centers with renewable energy to reduce the pollution caused by
its devices and online services.
The iPhone and iPad maker is
detailing its efforts to cultivate a greener Apple Inc. in an
environmental section on the company’s website that debuted Monday. The
site highlights the ways that the Cupertino, Calif., company is
increasing its reliance on alternative power sources and sending less
electronic junk to landfills.
Apple had already been distributing
gift cards at some of its 420 worldwide stores in exchange for iPhones
and iPods still in good enough condition to be resold. Now, all of the
company’s stores will recycle any Apple product at no charge. Gift cards
won’t be handed out for recycled products deemed to have little or no
resale value.
The offer covers a wide array of electronics that
aren’t supposed to be dumped in landfills because of the toxins in them.
In the past seven years alone, Apple has sold more than 1 billion
iPhones, iPods, iPads and Mac computers.
The new initiative, timed
to coincide with Tuesday’s annual celebration of Earth Day, strives to
position Apple as an environmental steward amid the technological
whirlwind of gadgets and Internet services that have been drawing more
electricity from power plants that primarily run on natural gas and
coal.
Technology products and services accounted for about 2
percent of worldwide emissions in 2012, roughly the same as the airline
industry, according to statistics cited by environmental protection
group Greenpeace in a report released earlier this month. Some of
biggest electricity demands come from huge data centers that house the
stacks of computers that process search requests, store photos and email
and stream video.
These online services, often dubbed "cloud
computing," collectively consume more electricity than all but five
countries — China, the U.S., Japan, India and Russia.
As the world’s largest technology company, Apple is trying to hatch more environmental solutions than
problems.
"What
the company wants to do is use all our innovation and all of our
expertise to make the planet more secure and make the environment
better," Lisa Jackson, Apple’s vice president of environmental
initiatives, said in a Monday interview. Jackson ran the Environmental
Protection Agency under President Obama before joining Apple last June.
Apple
CEO Tim Cook underscored the commitment by narrating a 1 minute, 44
second video about the company’s efforts to protect the environment.
"To us, better is a force of nature," Cook says in the video.
The
campaign appears to be more than just public relations stunt, based on
Greenpeace’s high praise for Apple in its recent review of the
technology industry’s environmental responsibility.
Among the 19
companies covered in the report, Greenpeace described Apple as "the most
innovative and most aggressive in pursuing its commitment to be 100
percent renewably powered." Greenpeace also gave high marks to Apple
rival, Google Inc., and Facebook Inc., which makes one of the most
popular apps on the iPhone and iPad.
All four of Apple’s data
centers, which are located in North Carolina, Oregon, Nevada and
California, already rely entirely on renewable energy, the company said.
The electricity comes from a variety of alternative sources, including
biogas, as well as wind, solar and hydro power.
That means
whenever people are interacting with Apple’s iTunes store, sending
messages or engaging in video chats, they "can feel comfortable that
they are not adding any carbon pollution to the atmosphere," Jackson
said.
About 94 percent of the power in Apple’s offices in the
world is now supplied by renewable energy sources, up from 35 percent in
2010, according to the company. Apple is building a new
2.8-million-square-foot headquarters in Cupertino that will be powered
solely by renewable energy when it’s completed in 2016.
About 120
of Apple’s U.S. stores, or nearly half of the outlets in the country,
run entirely on renewable energy. The stores running on renewable energy
include locations in New York, Chicago, San Francisco and Santa Monica,
Calif. The company isn’t specifying a timetable for meeting its goal to
convert its other 300 stores in the world to renewable energy.
___
Online: http://www.apple.com/environment/
Copyright 2014 The Associated Press. All rights
reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or
redistributed.