Apple has withdrawn its products from the Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool (EPEAT) certification, which is a program that gives products ratings of gold, silver and bronze classification. The classifications are based on how they stack up against a variety of criteria that is environmentally themed including energy consumption, environmental impact and recyclability.
Apple appeared to have taken the program very seriously up until it requested to be removed early in June. Apple, in fact, still touts its Gold status for iMacs on their product pages on Apple.com, although the status logo is now absent from its website.
EPEAT representatives said that Apple has not yet notified them it has decided to withdraw from the EPEAT registry and will not be submitting its products for environmental ratings by EPEAT.
EPEAT believes that Apple’s decision to leave, if in fact they do, is because of the tech giant’s plans for hardware in the future. Apple has indicated its future designs would no longer be consistent with requirements set forth by EPEAT. No details were released as to why they would not be consistent with EPEAT requirements.
The decision by Apple to design a new line of Macbook with Retina-Display makes them nearly impossible if not impossible to be disassembled, which would make the line completely ineligible for certification by EPEAT.
Going forward it will be curious to see if this decision by Apple will affect its overall sales or if the EPEAT certification was just one to please the environmentalists that purchased their products.
