How Green is the New iPad - part 1: comparing materials and production footprint to iPad 2

The new iPad has been with us almost 4 months (time goes by so fast..) and we figured it's about time to make a comparative analysis of its carbon footprint. In the next week or so we're going to explore the carbon footprint of the new iPad, compare it to the carbon footprint of iPad 2 and try to figure out if Apple has made any progress from environmental perspective with its new iPad and what's the new breakeven point between books and ebooks on the iPad. Every day we'll look into another part of the carbon footprint of the new iPad, starting today with production.

First, I have to say Apple should get kudos for the fact that it is releasing the carbon footprint of every new iPad it is releasing. No matter how their CSR is far from perfection or how they're behind most of the companies when it comes to sustainability or CDP reporting, when it comes to disclosing the environmental footprint of its products Apple is leading the way. e-reader and tablet sellers like Amazon or B&N are not even close to Apple, making basically every comparison between the environmental of books and ebooks on their products impossible. Therefore we should definitely appreciate the fact that Apple provide us with this detailed information.

Second, I want to mention that Apple revised the environmental report on the carbon footprint of iPad 2 (here's a link to the original report and here's the updated one). Apple of course excels in updates but this is still interesting given the fact that the revisions are quite substantial. We'll talk about it specifically in later on this week.

And after this long introduction we can finally start the first part of our analysis, which will be focused on production. We included not just information on the the new iPad and iPad 2, but also on the first iPad to give us a better understanding of the changes we see in the latest version of the iPad.

Production:
Carbon footprint of the new iPad - 120.6 kg CO2e
Carbon footprint of the iPad 2 - 85.8 kg CO2e
(Carbon footprint of the iPad - 75.4 kg CO2e)

Change: +40.6%

The new iPad continues a trend (at least according to the figures of the revised environmental footprint of the iPad 2) of growing carbon footprint when it comes to production. As you can see this is a significant increase of 40 percent and it's not clear what's the reason for it, as Apple claims that the materials have a reduced carbon footprint, which also helps to maximize shipping efficiency.

Here you can see the materials used for the new iPad (source: Apple's report):

And here are the materials used for the iPad2 (source: Apple's report - revised version)

Here's a comparison of the data presented in these graphs (weight, in grams):

	New iPad	iPad 2	Change
Display	132	142	- 7.0%
Plastics	10	19	-47.4%
Other metals	28	26	+7.7%
Circuit boards	40	40	0.0%
Glass	112	115	-2.6%
Battery	205	131	+56.5%
Aluminum	135	140	-3.6%

Let's see first what Apple says on the materials of the new iPad:

Apple’s ultracompact product and packaging designs lead the industry in material
efficiency. Reducing the material footprint of a product helps maximize shipping
efficiency. It also helps reduce energy consumed during production and material waste
generated at the end of the product’s life. iPad is made of aluminum and other materials
highly desired by recyclers.

Here's our take: First, it's interesting to see that Apple talks about reduction of the material footprint. If Apple refers to weight then the weight of the materials on the new iPad (662 grams) is actually greater than the weight of iPad 2 (613 grams) in total. If Apple refers to the carbon footprint of the materials then we have no way to know whether it's true or not, as Apple doesn't provide the figures - only weight and the carbon footprint of the production, which probably includes more elements (any in any case is higher in the new iPad).

Also, other than the battery which is heavier on the new iPad, it seems that Apple has managed to achieve in general incremental reductions. Only the change that was made in plastic is rather substantial with a reduction of almost 50 percent.

Bottom line: When it comes to production the new iPad is actually going backwards, generating a significant higher carbon footprint. While Apple claims that the materials have lower footprint, we have no way to know it due to lack of data and we can see that in total the weight of materials used to build the iPad has gone up in the new iPad. In all, the big picture is quite disappointing to those who were looking to see improvement and progress with regards to the production and materials efficiency of the iPad.

Next part on our series: comparing energy efficiency.

More resources on how green is the iPad can be found on our website at www.ecolibris.net/ipad.asp

More resources on the ebooks vs. physical books environmental debate can be found on our website at www.ecolibris.net/ebooks.asp.

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: Promoting sustainable reading!

Audiobook recommendations for the summer: Skinnydipping by Bethenny Frankel (and a giveaway!)

Today we start a new summer series of audiobook recommendations, and we have a great pleasure to open it with the perfect audiobook for the summer - it's funny, witty, interesting and can keep you entertained (and fully awake) for a whole road trip or couple of shorter trips to the beach.

Our audiobook is: Skinnydipping by Bethenny Frankel, read by January LaVoy. The audiobook is published by Simon & Schuster Audio.

This is a great audiobook and it helped me to actually hope a trip I took from NY to Delaware won't end as I haven't finished listening to the audiobook.. I had to patiently wait until my next trip to finish it. I enjoyed Frankel's wit and ability to build a complicated story and yet keep it light and funny. LaVoy's narrating is also very impressive, providing a real added value to the story. Bottom line - Skinnydipping is highly recommended, especially now, in the hot summer days!

What's Skinnydipping about? Here's the audiobook description:

Two-time New York Times bestselling author and one of TV’s biggest reality stars, Bethenny Frankel presents a sexy, hilarious, and romantic novel about a struggling actress and aspiring businesswoman’s pursuit of the female trifecta: a wildly successful career, the perfect man, and an amazing body.

Bestselling author, successful businesswoman, popular reality TV star, natural foods chef, and devoted mom Bethenny Frankel pens the perfect guilty pleasure novel—the sexy, hilarious, and romantic misadventures of a struggling actress and aspiring businesswoman burning through Hollywood and New York in determined pursuit of the female trifecta: the perfect man, job, and body. This outrageously entertaining and bawdy roman à clef follows a business-savvy, would-be actress as she burns through men like she burns through calories—our sexy, loud-mouthed heroine grasps at any opportunity that might take her to the top.

Listeners will jump at the chance to hear about the thrilling highs and cringe-worthy lows of Bethenny’s first shaky steps into adulthood, told here in a fictional format. Fans know Bethenny won’t shy away from the nitty gritty details of her career failures, romantic faux pas, and wild stories of “only needing a Tic Tac and a coochie” to have a good time on the town—and she will deliver them all with the biting wit her fans have come to love through her TV shows and bestselling nonfiction. While it may be a novel, there is no doubt that this is Bethenny, spilling her funniest stories and juiciest secrets over a few cocktails, with, as always, her trademark honesty: straight from the hip.

In this video clip author Susan Orlean talks about the audiobook and why she chose to narrate her book:

Skinnydipping is available on Amazon - http://amzn.to/M134UP.

GIVEAWAY ALERT!!

We're giving away one copy of this audiobook, courtesy of the publisher, Simon & Simon audio!

How you can win? Very simple. All you have to do is to add a comment to this post with a reply to the following question: In which reality show you would like to be on? (and why..). We will have a raffle on Monday, July 9, 5:00PM EST between all the readers that will reply by then. The winner will be announced the following day.

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: Promoting sustainable reading!

Better Paper Project offers a free webinar on sustainable publishing in the 21st century

Our friends at Better Paper Project will run on July 11, 1:00pm a free webinar on sustainable publishing. It's a 1-hour webinar and free - magazine publishers interested in getting greener are welcome to check it out. Here are some more details on the webinar:

You are invited to join the Green America Better Paper Project for this event, in recognition of your magazine’s efforts at improving paper consumption practices. This webinar will provide participants with information on existing tools and best practices to forward paper procurement policies and provide a snap shot and update on global forest hotspots, including the Great Bear Rainforest, Canada’s Boreal Forest and the rainforests of Indonesia.

Staff from Canopy will also join the Green America Better Paper Project to help answer questions on how to engage your suppliers and mills to promote lasting solutions that provide certainty both in terms of supply of environmental paper for your company, as well as ecological protection of our global forests.

For more details on Better Paper Project visit their website - http://betterpaper.ning.com/. You can register to the webinar at https://cc.readytalk.com/cc/s/showReg?udc=1uz0rjo4wszn

Yours,

Raz @ecolibris

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

ECO Banners with Bamboo Retractable Stand from Greg Barber, the Eco-Friednly Printer

I'd like to share with you a message from our printer and friend Greg Barber on a new green printing product he's introducing - the Eco Banner:

I am introducing a new line of Eco Banners that include a Bamboo, Retractable Stand. It takes me 20 seconds to assemble these banners at a trade show, and we have a mini carry bag that looks like a kid's golf bag , to easily carry the banner to your next show..


Take a look at our retractable banners, made from Recycled Plastic Soda Bottles.



I will introduce a table top retractable banner, size 8.5 x 12, with a mini, Bamboo Stand in the next few weeks. It will retail for $95 and may replace the need for huge banners. I plan to introduce it at the next Green Festival in D.C in late September.

The large size banner is approx 3 x 7 feet. I will place the banner and the stand near the front of my space at a show. It captures the eye of visitors faster.

For more details please contact Greg Barber, www.ecofriendlyprinter.com, 973-224-1132.

Photo: A beautiful 100% PET Bottle banner Greg made for the Green Breakfast Club - Green Breakfast Club provides a unique resource exchange and networking format to grow local green business communities through sharing resources.

Yours,

Raz Godelnik

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

From our planting partner RIPPLE Africa: Geoff and Force - 24 hour Sponsored Silence!

We wanted to share with you a new effort from our planting partner RIPPLE Africa to raise money and this time it involves an interesting challenge - keeping Geoff and Force from RIPPLE Africa silent for 24 hours. Can they do it? Susie, a previous RIPPLE Africa volunteer, thinks they can and has given them the challenge. She has a JustGiving page where anyone can sponsor them to keep quiet for a whole day!




Please click here to sponsor Geoff and Force and join the effort to make Malawi a quieter place for 24 hours :) http://www.justgiving.com/geoffandforce

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: Planting trees for your books!

10 green ebooks for Father's Day!

Happy Father's Day! If you haven't bought your father anything yet and you're looking for a last-minute idea that can be delivered in 60 seconds, and your dad has an e-reader or tablet we have an idea for you, or actually 10 ideas!

Following our tradition of ten recommendations on green ebooks, we have prepared a list is including ebooks on a varied list of green topics, which we think will suit different types of dads. We hope your dad is one of them and that you will find this list helpful!

The links of these ebooks are to Amazon.com and I apologize in advance to all the Nook, iPad, Kobo and Sony Reader owners, although a Kindle app can make it a good fit for some of the other options (iPad for example), or if you see something you like, just go and buy it in your own e-reader bookstore.

You can find all the lists published so far on our recommended green ebooks webpage (see examples at the bottom of this post).

Without further ado, here's tour list of 10 recommended green e-books for Father's Day:

1. The Good Food Revolution: Growing Healthy Food, People, and Communities by Will Allen - Gotham Books (May 10, 2012)

2. Off the Grid: Inside the Movement for More Space, Less Government, and True Independence in Modern America by Nick Rosen - Penguin (July 27, 2010)

3. Into Thick Air: Biking to the Bellybutton of Six Continents by Jim Malusa - Sierra Club Books (July 1, 2010)

4. The Bucolic Plague: How Two Manhattanites Became Gentlemen Farmers: An Unconventional Memoir (P.S.) by Josh Kilmer-Purcell - Harper Collins, Inc. (June 1, 2010)

5. Making Transit Fun!: How to Entice Motorists from Their Cars (and onto their feet, a bike, or bus) by Darrin Nordahl - Island Press (13 April 2012)

6. Confessions of a Radical Industrialist: Profits, People, Purpose--Doing Business by Respecting the Earth by Robin White and Ray Anderson - St. Martin's Press (April 1, 2010)

7. A Chicken in Every Yard: The Urban Farm Store's Guide to Chicken Keeping by Robert Litt - Ten Speed Press (22 Mar 2011)

8. Sippewissett: Or, Life on a Salt Marsh by Tim Traver - Chelsea Green Publishing (December 12, 2011)

9. Reinventing Fire: Bold Business Solutions for the New Energy Era by Amory Lovins - Chelsea Green Publishing (September 26, 2011)

10. Local Dollars, Local Sense: How to Shift Your Money from Wall Street to Main Street and Achieve Real Prosperity by Michael H. Shuman - Chelsea Green Publishing (February 28, 2012)

More recommended green ebooks lists:

Best ebooks for green entrepreneurs

Best green marketing ebooks

Best green business ebooks


Happy Father's Day!
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: Planting trees for your books!

5 Reasons a Tree Farm is Not a Forest

This is a guest column by Brent Hardy of Extra Space Storage.

On a recent trip to visit family in Georgia, I noticed a familiar illusion as we sped down a country road. Rows and rows of trees lined up perfectly, deep into what looked to be a forest.

Just as that thought struck me, I recalled a short video I encountered recently, called 'A Tree Farm is Not a Forest' (http://www.denveropenmedia.org/project/promos/show/a-tree-farm-not-a-forest). I hadn't done any follow-up research after watching the 30-second clip, apart from a long, "Hmm..." but as I let myself become mesmerized by row after row of perfectly planted pine trees, I decided to look a bit further into the topic.

The E-books vs. paper books debate (http://www.ecolibris.net/ebooks.asp) will likely rage on for years to come, and even the most devoted environmentalist would be foolhardy to call for the complete elimination of paper, a medium that has allowed for most of the progress we've made as a society over the last millennium.

Still, every time we pick up a book or magazine, it's important to realize that what we hold in our hands was once a tree. It was cut down and shredded into wood chips, turned to a watery pulp mixture, and then flattened and dried with steam and giant rollers.

In order to manufacturer the paper that we need, tree farms are a necessity. But destroying the few remaining old growth forests we have should no longer even be considered.

Logging companies are fond of saying that for every tree they cut down, three are replanted. That may be the case, but a tree farm does not make a forest.

Here's why:

1. Diversity
   

   In a forest, every acre boasts a wide variety of plant species, each providing shelter and sustenance to different animals. When a mix of pine, oak, magnolia, and bay are all cut down in order to plant one species of pine, what results may still look like a forest, but it's little different from a field of corn.
   

   Some animals may still utilize the new one-species tree farm, but others will be forced to migrate elsewhere (and finding a place to go gets more difficult every day).
   

2. Different Canopy
   

   In a forest, the trees all vary in age. That results in a layered canopy. Light can penetrate in some places, allowing young saplings to grow. Different species can coexist because they're not overwhelmed by a faster-growing competitor that blocks out there light.
   

   In a tree farm, each tree was planted at exactly the same time. They grow at the same pace, creating an even canopy that blocks out light and prevents new species from growing underneath them.
   

3. Different Ground Cover
   

   Decomposing logs are good for a forest. As they breakdown, they provide nutrients back to the soil. Mammals, reptiles and amphibians find shelter in them, and rainwater is absorbed in their decaying wood, slowly releasing water into the soil around them (and helping to slow the spread of forest fires).
   

   In a tree farm, there are rarely rotting logs on the ground. By removing a step in a plant's life cycle, the natural, circular progression of the forest is broken.
   

4. Native Species May Not Be Present
   In Georgia, native longleaf pines have long been replaced with loblolly pines in tree farms, which grow faster and are thus more profitable. While loblolly causes no direct harm to the land it grows on (it's not an invasive species, like eucalyptus, choking out other species around it), its proliferation leaves little room for the longleaf to grow.
   

   When we replace important native species with farmed species, the other plants and animals that rely on the native species lose habitat and disappear as well.
   

5. Different Purposes
   A forest exists for its own intrinsic value. Humans enjoy them for hiking, camping, and simply getting away from the business of city life.
   

   Tree farms are operated and controlled for profit, just like any other crop. They are planted and cut down at intervals, providing no longevity or diversity.
   

   It's a very simple difference.

In January, the 3,500-year-old Senator bald cypress tree burned to the ground (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/21/us/disbelief-still-as-florida-reacts-to-burning-of-3500-year-old-tree.html), a needless accident caused by a careless woman smoking drugs inside the tree.

It's a shame, not only for the loss of the tree, but due to the realization that we're not likely to have more trees like the Senator come along. We're still cutting down old growth redwoods on the Pacific coast and in Canada.

In a tree farm, we're raising wood and cutting it down when it's ready. The trees will never become millennia-old behemoths. That's because to grow giant trees, you have to let them live in a forest, and leave them alone.

Brent Hardy is the driving force for Extra Space Storage corporate responsibility through energy management and sustainability programs at www.extraspace.com. Brent leads a conversation about sustainability at http://extraspace.com/blog/category/Sustainability.aspx.