Apple: 75% of Our World Wide Power Needs Now Come From Renewable Power Sources 262
skade88 writes "Apple now owns and runs enough renewable energy power plants that 75% of their world wide power needs come from renewable sources such as wind, solar, geothermal and hydro. From the Apple Blog Post: 'Our investments are paying off. We've already achieved 100 percent renewable energy at all of our data centers, at our facilities in Austin, Elk Grove, Cork, and Munich, and at our Infinite Loop campus in Cupertino. And for all of Apple's corporate facilities worldwide, we're at 75 percent, and we expect that number to grow as the amount of renewable energy available to us increases. We won't stop working until we achieve 100 percent throughout Apple.'"
Does that include their manufacturing plants? (Score:4, Insightful)
Does that include the Asian suppliers' and subcontractors' plants that actually manufacture all of Apple's products?
I didn't think so.
So perhaps Apple should not too their own horn [xkcd.com] very loudly on this.
What about manufacturing? (Score:1, Insightful)
crappy summary is crappy (Score:0, Insightful)
ftfa:
"Our goal is to power every facility at Apple entirely with energy from renewable sources"
considering the truly humongous amount of energy going into the building of laptops (the ones built in coal-powered China) that's not really the difficult or most rewarding bit though, is it
* grumbles about misleading headline *
Poorly worded title (Score:2, Insightful)
75% of Apple's Power Comes From Renewable Sources
Instead? Or even
Apple Says 75% Of Their Power Comes From Renewable Sources
which would also be more clear.
Re:Does that include their manufacturing plants? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Does that include their manufacturing plants? (Score:4, Insightful)
No one did that. The act of moving to more renewable power is laudable. The act of lying about it is reprehensible.
Re:And by Renewable Power Sources (Score:5, Insightful)
There are lots of ways they can clean up their image and in my opinion, they aren't addressing the more serious concerns.
Opposing child labour and sweatshops, and being green are pretty serious concerns in my book. All of them certainly far more serious than how much they are in tune with the demands of the OSS community.
Re:And by Renewable Power Sources (Score:5, Insightful)
"More serious concerns", like your previously addressed child labor?
News flash: Apple is pretty much the only tech company that is actually addressing that concern. Apple actually investigates their manufacturers and drop them if they use child labor. Other tech companies by and large don't.
Re:What about... (Score:4, Insightful)
You mean the child slave labour that Apple actually works hard to not use, unlike every other tech company?
Re:New tags (Score:5, Insightful)
It's already clear that they conveniently left out all manufacturing/storage facilities, as if subcontracting made them not responsible. And of course, they don't use conflict minerals, their workers work 8-hour shifts in comfy offices ... you get the idea.
They left it out because those places are beyond their control. I suppose Apple could go to another contract manufacturer, maybe one that Dell or HP uses. Oh wait, it's the same one. There are not a lot of choices when it comes to this kind of manufacturing. Finding one that is green is not likely.
Suppose you want to go green. You can do all you can use renewable energy at your home. What about your work place? Is your company green? What about the facilities they rent? What about they supermarket you use, the dry cleaners, etc? Do you have kids and is their school green? Is your car/bus/subway green? Unless you own 100% of every aspect of your life that uses energy, you have to accept that some places will use fossil fuels as energy.
Apple is converting the facilities that they control as much as they can. You can criticize them for things out of their control or you can applaud them for doing what they can.
Re:And by Renewable Power Sources (Score:4, Insightful)
You do realize that in the countries where child labor is practiced that the children NEED the work. ...
I understand that it means that the country itself is in a bad way and that country needs to serve its people better.
I also get that the thought of child labor to us is repugnant. What we need to keep in mind though is that if we could immediately stop all child labor tomorrow
Many people would die as a result.
Re:Does that include their manufacturing plants? (Score:5, Insightful)
No one did that. The act of moving to more renewable power is laudable. The act of lying about it is reprehensible.
Actually just about everyone in this thread did that, and they lauded nothing. Typical of the haters who hate no matter what. There was no lie. Their power is from renewable. They are not claiming that everything in their supply chain (including the mining of rare earth metals) is from renewables.
Re:So much hatred (Score:5, Insightful)
Slashdotters have been infected for about 6 years now with some weird vocal Google lifestyle. As soon as the iPhone came out, Apple was put up on high like the underdog had finally won. Slashdotters rejoiced that Apple was finally ahead of Microsoft in a big way. David had beat Goliath.
A year later when the first Android phone came out, it caused a great schism.
I think it's really sad that people from both sides of the issue couldn't be more objective.
But ultimately, I think that this has been a clash of culture that until now has been reasonably aligned...
Open source is Freedom of software, not necessarily free software. This has been beat into the first generation of Slashdotters. However, Google has come in and consistently pushed their own solutions to be "Free with an asterix" Google dependency. Many people find google's commitment to free software noble, but they are slowly tying themselves to Google's interests. There is a great distinction between GNU and Google for instance on the way software is produced.
People who find themselves immersed in google's technologies start to have their own self protection response when Google's interests are challenged.
"How can Google be bad? They give me so much. I can't imagine doing my daily work without Google."
This is NOT the same as the traditional Open source culture. Open source culture teaches you to be self reliant, independent and if you don't like the way code behaves change it. Giveback to society, but don't wait for society to fix your problems. Does google give you the ability to do this for ANY of their products and services?
Enter Apple. Apple is a for profit commercial company. You pay up front for what you want. You vote with your dollars. There's no sleaze, no slime. The restrictions are clear, the capabilities are clear. If you don't like it, don't buy it. Yet they are also an open source contributor and have long been one of the center points for FreeBSD development. ( Consider the irony that Apple's Webkit is now the basis for almost all web browsers )
They are NOT the doting father... they are not the place to go to for freeloading. They are quite clear of what they do and don't do. If you want something, look around a vendor may have a solution that fits what you want, or write your own software and give back to the community.
Not the same model as open source, but I argue, a compatible one that is in the best interest of consumer freedom.
The Google crowd doesn't like this. They'd rather wait for what "entitled" freebie they should get, and they get annoyed that Apple never gives it to them.
So when Android came out, and Apple "disagreed" with how it was designed ( I say this simply to try and avoid a rant of who is right and wrong here... go with me on this) , suddenly Apple is the ultimate bad guy. To the Google crowd, Apple is threatening to take away your lifestyle. Only it's not your lifestyle. It's not what Slashdot was founded on. It's GOOGLE's Life style.
Re:And by Renewable Power Sources (Score:5, Insightful)
You do realize that in the countries where child labor is practiced that the children NEED the work.
It's a subtle point that Apple is aware of. Whilst of course they can't change the fortunes of a nation, on those occasions when they have found a subcontractor that has broken the rules, and employed underage workers, it's a condition of remaining a subcontractor that they continue to pay the family the wage even though the child is no longer working PLUS finance the child to go to school.
It's a good move. It's a disincentive for a subcontractor to risk it, as well as making sure that Apple's intervention doesn't make life worse for the kid or his/her family.
Waste Energy (Score:5, Insightful)
One should also take into account the useful life of the products they manufacture, with sealed-in batteries and throw-away design, along with their own marketing effort to out-fashion their own devices after only two years.
Using terajoules of the cleanest energy to produce stuff that will end up in the trash faster than you can say "planned obsolescence" is still waste.
I'll applaud when they reverse the flow and encourage people to keep their computers longer through cheap support plans and openness.
Re:Does that include their manufacturing plants? (Score:5, Insightful)
There was no lie. Their power is from renewable.
I'll believe that when they stop selling "Apple" computers and start selling OSX for "Foxconn" computers. Until then, it's all a load of bullshit, since the work they've contracted isn't being done with renewable power.
So, like I said, you're just a hater. All their power needs for their operations is what the article is about. Not all the power used by all subcontractors in the manufacturing chain back to when the stuff was dust. Haters cannot acknowledge anything good about Apple. If Tim Cook said he wiped his ass north to south, you'd be shouting it should be south to north.
Re:Does that include their manufacturing plants? (Score:4, Insightful)
Haters cannot acknowledge anything good about Apple.
I can, and I do (as said previously) but I also live here in reality, where I realize that Apple is engaging in prevarication. I have a long history with Apple, I was a Mac user for many years, so I have good reason to hate Apple. No one who is not a total fanboy would spend as much effort as you are defending Apple's prevarication. I am not a fan of any corporations. Except maybe Clif. I don't even like Clif bars, but they treat their employees right.
Bull. They are not prevaricating. And only a rabid hater would spend so much time perpetuating that lie.
Re:And by Renewable Power Sources (Score:5, Insightful)
We have the advantage of sitting in our houses or apartments looking at pictures on the internet of the terrible conditions these people live in and we see children doing labor that adult men and women should do and we are rightfully sickened...the problem is that the GP is right in that sometimes this is for survival and there is no other way. Any time when there is this level of drive to simply survive, however, there are always pieces of shit willing to take advantage and those are the people really responsible for the "sweat shop" label. Those are the people who need to be stopped. I doubt mothers and fathers want their children working in factories very much but when their extra $ is what allows your family to get that extra heel of bread so that you can live, circumstances force people to mature from children to adults much quicker. Luckily none of us have ever had to experience a situation like this.
Re:Does that include their manufacturing plants? (Score:4, Insightful)
The entire page constitutes a lie because they are deliberately implying that all their operations will be renewable.
"implying"? If you can't understand plain English, that's your problem. It talks about Apple's corporate operations, not the operations of other companies.
That's because you're doing it to yourself, which is called cognitive dissonance.
That phrase doesn't mean what you think it means.