Apple is, as we all know, weird, but this one is strange even for them: they’ve asked that 39 of their products be pulled from the Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool registry. Apple themselves, among other electronics companies and the EPA, helps fund EPEAT.
But it’s not a lack of money that’s making Apple pull out:
To earn EPEAT (short for Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool) certification, “recyclers need to be able to easily disassemble products, with common tools, to separate toxic components, like batteries,” the Wall Street Journal’s Joel Schectman reports.
Apple’s new MacBook Pro has rapidly become notorious among nerds for being pretty much completely impossible to disassemble and Apple seems to be rapidly heading in a direct that values getting thinner casings over being able to easily repair its stuff.
Not that the idea of Apple being all closed-system and trying to stop people from hacking its hardware is remotely shocking, but as people keep pointing out, Apple has consistently asked consumers what they want and consumers keep coming back with “thinner and lighter, dammit!” So Apple is going thinner and lighter and damn the environmental torpedoes. It probably helps that they know that most of their customers, at root, really don’t give a crap about whether or not their computers are recyclable, hackable or remotely environmentally friendly. They give a crap about neat apps and looking hip.
If you were wondering where Google and Asus come into all of this with their Nexus 7 tablet, it was apparently designed to be opened with common tools. In other words, nerds will buy it in droves and everybody else will probably be getting an iPad.
(Image courtesy Wangsy on Flickr)