Officials from the city of San Francisco have said they will no longer allow the purchase of Apple products for any of their municipal agencies.
This follows Apple's withdrawal of all 39 of its products from the Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool (EPEAT) green registry.
EPEAT is the US government-backed group that is responsible for setting environmental standards for electronics. Apple was reportedly involved in the setting of the EPEAT standards when it was first established, but last month the company notified EPEAT it would no longer submit its products for environmental rating. The reason for this is said to be the fact that Apple's design direction is no longer consistent with EPEAT requirements.
A key requirement for an electronic product to be certified “green” is that the average person must be able to disassemble the product with common tools. Apple's latest products have been widely noted as being extremely difficult to disassemble.
CIO Journal, officials with the San Francisco Department of Environment said Apple laptops and desktops will no longer qualify for purchase with city funds. Since 2007, the city has had a policy in place which mandates city funds can only be used to purchase EPEAT-certified electronics.
Reportedly only 1-2% of San Francisco's municipal computers are Macs, making the latest announcement largely symbolic. However, the move by San Francisco could be indicative of further problems Apple could face following its withdrawal from EPEAT, as many government and educational institutions in the US require products they purchase to be specifically EPEAT-certified.
Despite dropping the EPEAT certification, Apple is still noted as being one of the more transparent companies when it comes to its environmental footprint - even making its annual environmental impact report available on its Web site.
Apple responded to recent reports with a statement sent to The Loop that said: “Apple takes a comprehensive approach to measuring our environmental impact and all of our products meet the strictest energy-efficiency standards backed by the US government, Energy Star 5.2.
“We also lead the industry by reporting each product's greenhouse gas emissions on our Web site, and Apple products are superior in other important environmental areas not measured by EPEAT, such as removal of toxic materials.”
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