How green is the iPad? Ask Mike Daisey

Although Mike Daisey describes himself as a lifelong Apple super fan, he'll probably say not so much, at least when it comes to the social impact of the iPad (as well as other Apple products). Why? Listen to the opening episode of the year of This American Life (see below) and receive the answer.

I also wrote about it today on Triple Pundit. Here's a paragraph from the article:

Mike Daisey describes himself as a lifelong Apple super fan. One day he saw some photos from a new iPhone, taken by workers at the factory where it was made and started wondering who makes his Apple gadgets. He decided to investigate and traveled to Shenzhen, where the main factory of Foxconn is located. Foxconn is the largest contract electronics manufacturer in the world with clients including Apple, HP and Microsoft. The manufacturer’s factories were also home to at least 12 workers suicides last year. Daisey wasn’t the first one to investigate what happens in Foxconn, yet his report is different and will probably trouble you more profoundly than written reports.

For more information on how green is the iPad visit our iPad webpage at http://www.ecolibris.net/ipad.asp

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: Plant a tree for every book you read!

Greenpeace wants you to think how many trees it takes to make chopsticks next time you order Chinese food!

Greenpeace launched last year a campaign in China to call attention to the urgent need for forest conservation in China. One of the main issues they focused on was chopsticks.

According to statistics from the Forestry Administration, China produced 57 billion pairs of disposable wooden chopsticks in 2009 alone. How many trees were cut down for these chopsticks? According to Greenpeace , the production of disposable chopsticks required wood from 3.8 million trees!

Last year Greenpeace and Ogilvy Beijing have teamed up to plant an eye-catching “chopstick forest” that was displayed outside The Place, a popular shopping center in the heart of Beijing.

Ogilvy explained how it worked:

Over the last several months, Ogilvy worked with Greenpeace, local artist Yinhai Xu and more than 200 volunteers from 20 Chinese universities to collect more than 80,000 pairs of used (and sanitized) disposable wooden chopsticks from restaurants and repurposed them into a forest of chopstick trees that stand approximately 5 meters tall.

Aihong Li, director of Greenpeace's Forest Protection Program, said: “These trees should have been abundantly green and vibrant, but now they are pieced together with wasteful disposable chopsticks. Our hope is that everyone in China will join us in saying "no" to disposable chopsticks to protect our forests.”

Now, 6 months later, Greenpeace is coming out with a video entitled "Disposable Project" that is showing the campaign and calling for greater awareness among chopstick users for the materials the chopsticks are made from. In other words: Trees. Their suggestion? Very simple - replacing wooden chopsticks with a plastic or metal version, a reusable and environmentally-friendly alternative. Think about it next time you order Chinese take-out.



Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: Plant trees for your books!

The Other Side of Apple (and not the one you're gonna like..)

This is the title of a report released yesterday by the Institute of Environmental and Public Affairs (IPE), an independent Beijing-based non-profit organization. In the report, Apple is accused of "ignoring hazardous and unhealthy conditions at the factories in China where its components are assembled."

The report is not just about Apple. It outlines findings from a group of 36 non-governmental organizations into environmental and health practices among technology companies that are operating in China. Out of the 29 global technology companies that were ranked, Apple was ranked last.

Apple was not the only company the report cited as failing to act or respond to environmental and social concerns - Nokia, LG, SingTel, Sony, and Ericsson also fared poorly in the survey. But the groups said Apple was the worst, for "dodging" questions from the public and requests from environmental groups for investigations.

This was a bit of a surprise for the authors. “We originally thought that Apple, as a corporate citizen, would take a leadership role, but now we feel they ended up as the most obstructive,” Ma Jun, director of the Institute of Environmental and Public Affairs said in a phone interview to the San Francisco Chronicle.

Examples? Here's one: "among the examples cited in the report is Wintek Corp. which in 2009 is alleged to have used poisonous chemicals in the production of screens for Apple [touch screens for the iPhone and iPad] that resulted in workers being hospitalized for nerve damage. In a regulatory filing in May, Wintek said it stopped using the chemical, N-Hexane, and all workers were getting adequate treatment. Apple has not acknowledged Wintek as a supplier, Ma said."

And what does Apple say in response? “Apple has had an extensive supplier auditing program since 2006 and we have lots of information available through our website,” said Jill Tan, a Hong Kong-based spokeswoman for Apple.

The issues Apple has with its suppliers as well as its limited willingness at best to address them are not new to those who followed the wave of worker suicides last year at Foxconn, Apple's primary China supplier, last year. Again and again we see that although Apple seems to be generally transparent and progressive in their approach to social responsibility (see Apple's Supplier Responsibility Report), they are not willing to answer tough questions and be fully transparent when it comes to criticism on their operations.

My guestimation is that it is connected to Apple's (and Steve Job's) general lack of willingness to acknowledge that they might do something that is not perfect or god forbidden wrong, no matter what the issue is. This sort of hubris is definitely not the culture you would expect from an innovative and creative company like Apple.

And if you think Apple should be excused because all the companies behave this way - think again. BT and HP, for example, ranked highly in IPE’s list of technology companies because they have responded to environmental problems and worked with suppliers to ensure better compliance, according to Ma.

You can learn more about the report from this video published by IPE:



More articles on this issue:

Is the iPad manufactured at a modern sweatshop?
Can the iPad be "green" if it is manufactured in a sweatshop?

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: Promoting Sustainable Reading!

Is the iPad manufactured at a modern sweatshop?

It depends who you're asking and what's your definition of modern sweatshop. last Monday I heard Frederik Balfour, who wrote a lengthy story about Foxconn for Bloomberg Business Week earlier this year, on NPR. He was talking with Melissa Block on 'All Things Considered'.

Block asked him "When you were at the Foxconn plant, you spoke with about two dozen workers, what did they tell you about conditions there? And did it seem to you like they were working essentially in a sweatshop?"

And Balfour replied:

"No. I've visited plenty of sweatshops around the world, from Central America to Vietnam. This is definitely not a sweatshop.

The thing is, though, that these workers are probably under more pressure than anyone else working in China. The supervisors are extremely draconian. There's no margin for error. The sophistication of the process and the products that they're producing means that they're always under the gun. And that, I think, is what contributes to the high stress level at Foxconn."

According to Wikipedia, a sweatshop is (sweat factory) is "a working environment considered to be unacceptably difficult or dangerous — especially by developed countries with high standards of living. However sweatshops may exist in any country. Sweatshop workers often work long hours for unusually low pay, regardless of laws mandating overtime pay or a minimum wage. Child labour laws may be violated. Sweatshops may have hazardous materials and situations. Employees may be subject to employer abuse without an easy way to protect themselves."

So even though Foxconn's employees are paid decent wages in Chinese terms and work in clean and shiny modern building and you won't there child labour, there are still some disturbing similarities between the conditions of work at Foxconn according to Balfour (a plant where the supervisors are extremely draconian, there's no margin for error and workers are always the gun) and Wikipedia's description of sweatshop.

Balfour explains in his article for Bloomberg Business Week that Apple knows about the conditions of work at Foxconn, but has its own reasons not to cut the ties with Foxconn, even though it violates Apple's code of conduct:In his article for Bloomberg Business Week.

"The incident prompted Apple executives to dispatch an audit team to investigate conditions at the Longhua plant. The report, still available on Apple's company website, uncovered several violations of Apple's code of conduct, including excessive overtime, an overly complicated wage structure, and unacceptable living conditions such as triple-decker bunk beds. Foxconn made changes that included an overhaul of its overtime practices.

Although Apple pressured Foxconn, Steve Jobs wasn't about to sever ties with Hon Hai, not with preparations under way for the production of Apple's next big product, the iPhone, which came out the following year. "Steve Jobs' achievements wouldn't be possible without Terry," says Chang Tien-wen, author of the 2005 book The Tiger and The Fox: Terry Gou's Global Competitive Strategy."

Apparently the violation of Apple's code of conduct doesn't stop Apple from continuing its working relationship with Foxconn and only two weeks ago AppleInsider reported that 'Foxconn rumored to ship next-gen iPad in 100 days for April launch'.

The bottom line is that no matter how you define Foxconn, I think the employees there deserve better conditions. It is not a big secret that it's all about the pricing of the product and Foxconn ability to provide it in minimum cost to Apple. Probably manufacturing it elsewhere (or even at Foxconn) in better working conditions will translate to higher costs. Still, doesn't seem right that Apple's financial results should come on the expense of the rights of employees for decent conditions, even if they are in China and even if they work for a powerful company such as Foxconn.

If Apple wants us to take seriously what it describes as its commitment to "the highest standards of social responsibility throughout our supply base" ("Apple is committed to ensuring the highest standards of social responsibility wherever our products are made. We insist that our suppliers provide safe working conditions, treat workers with dignity and respect, and use environmentally responsible manufacturing processes."), something has to change.

What will make this change happren? I have a little faith in Apple's own will to do something about it, but I have more faith in Apple's stakeholders and I hope that a continuous demand of especially of customers will eventually get Apple to do the right thing and make the iPad not just a cool device, but also a one that is manufactured responsibly.

More articles on this issue:

Can the iPad be "green" if it is manufactured in a sweatshop?

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: Promoting Sustainable Reading!

Reusing textbooks in Chinese schools

Good news from China - the China Daily reported yesterday that the Chinese Ministry of Education will allow the reuse of textbooks in primary and middle schools in some rural areas starting this new semester.

The newspaper reports that "the central government will set up a fund for the purchase of these textbooks, which will be issued to students free of charge. Students will be required to keep the books in good order for their reuse by others."

This initiative is a win-win deal - parents will spend less on textbooks and the environment will
benefit as well - less trees will be cut, less energy will be used and pollutant produced in paper-making will be reduced.

If this initiative will be implemented in all of China, it can have an enormous impact because of China's huge population. Check out these figures - it is estimated that $4.2 billion is spent on the purchase of textbooks during the nine-year period of compulsory education nationwide and that about 450,000 tons of paper is used annually in the printing of these books, which requires the consumption of about 9 million trees!

In any case this is a good start and we hope that further steps to broaden this initiative will follow. Maximising the usage of each textbook that is already printed is a goal we should look for not only in China, but worldwide, both in schools and universities. This is the opportunity to remind Chegg.com, an online service that rents textbooks to students and also plants a tree for every rented book with Eco-Libris.

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Plant a tree with Eco-Libris!

How Do you Say "Sustainable Reading" in Chinese?

Martin Daniels of The Booksellers Association brings us this story about an interesting business model coming all the way from Shanghai, which allows book readers to get their books for free by allowing sponsors to plant advertisings in the pages. Sounds familiar? No wonder, this is more or less the business model that keeps most of the content on the internet free, and many free magazines floating. Only this time we're talking printed books. Yep, it's time for China to teach us something about innovative business ideas, and BookGG may be just the first of many.

So how does this work? Martin Daniels explains:

"The consumer selects the book and then selects the sponsors with their placement on your book until the price of the book drops to zero. The book is then printed and posted.

For every free book, you need to have a book ticket, which you get once you have registered. You then earn further book tickets by referring new users or orders or buying into an account, which will issue new tickets every month.

Every advertising sponsor can only be selected by an individual once so promoting you to spread your sponsors and in effect find out about others. The sponsor receives all personal information.

Finally the books are printed on demand by Bookgg and contain your sponsors adverts."


So although I personally don't relish the idea of flipping through my new book while being annoyed by ads, I do believe that I would go for it to get a very expensive book I really want for half the price. And frankly I don't mind my purchases being sponsored, especially when I can choose the sponsor, and if sponsors are categorized for me with some conscious labels such as "fair-trade" and "organic".

But what most appeals to me from a Sustainable Reading point of view is the fact, that a successful venture like this in the west can also help popularize print-on-demand technology, which is apparently already quite popular in oh so unsustainable, or so they say, China.

So let's wait and see, shall we?

Best,
Eylon @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: Plant a tree for every book you read!