Comment recycled or not? (Score 0) 225
Maybe someone can clear this up for me. Apple drops out of EPEAT because some of their more recent devices can't be recycled. They try to deflect attention by claiming that it doesn't matter if they can't be recycled because they made them using green manufacturing processes. This strikes me as someone saying "it doesn't matter if the brakes don't work because we have a hybrid engine". Secondly, several people have pointed out that you can give them back to Apple to "recycle" but no one ever defines what that means. Every single recycling professional has stated that you can't recycle aluminum that is bonded to glass. Period. Apple does not nor have they claimed to have some magic process that allows them to do what no one else can do in this respect. So what does giving the devices to Apple to "recycle" really mean? Does it mean that Apple just dumps them along the roadside when no one is looking in a cynical "out of sight out of mind" way? Do they "recycle" them by giving them to poor third world countries and let them throw them away? I've yet to see this explained. There is also no economical way to recycle batteries and plastic that have been bonded together. I'd like to hear Apple address this clearly and with out all of the fancy dancing and deflection. To say that we can't meet the requirements for recycling as required by EPEAT but that doesn't matter because we did other "green things" is like saying "filling the landfills with polluting junk is ok as long as we were careful when we made the junk in the first place". It's avoiding the issue in much the same way that the Wizard screams to Dorothy not to look behind the curtain. Nothing to see here. Move along. You're HOLDING IT WRONG!