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Www.Guardian.Co.Uk - It is a delight to have Fred Pearce's new Greenwash column starting over on the environment site. Not just because Pearce (who I've known for about 20 years) always brings a forensic, perception-changing approach to environmental matters; but also because there're so many rich pickings for us to provide him with from the computing industry. Hell, on our own we could probably give him enough claims to fill the column for the first year.What sort of things? Well, first of all there's the underlying assumption that chucking away your old computer or data centre in favour of something newer is going to be more "environmental". Thus Apple touted its new portable computers last week as its greenest-ever ? "highly recyclable and even more energy efficient". OK, but that's relative, isn't it? Carved from a block of aluminium they may be (watch the video), but that aluminium probably wasn't made by collecting discarded kitchen foil; it'll have been extracted as bauxite, and then turned into aluminium blocks, which in energy-intensity rivals running a particle collider. So they're "greener" if you don't mind all the fossil fuels burnt to extract the contents and put them together. (I'm assuming the bauxite mines and smelters aren't powered by windmills ? though Norway is a favoured location for aluminium smelting because of its plentiful, and green, hydroelectric sources.)I've also enjoyed the past 18 months or so in which Dell has tried to transform itself into a "green" company. The most amusing part has been its "Plant a tree for me" plan, which tries ? apparently not hard enough ? to persuade people buying a new computer to purchase carbon offsetting, in the form of one-third of a tree planted per machine, for its first three years. The prices aren't high ? £1 per laptop, £3 per desktop ? but people aren't biting. The best numbers I can calculate, based on what the company doles out, is that less than 1% of purchased machines are offset. The point is that Dell does seem t... Greenwash? It's all over the computing industry | Technology | guardian.co.uk {...} It's great to have a new column exposing greenwashing. The computer industry alone could keep it filled for a year, says Charles Arthur {...} Published: October 24, 2008, 1:00 am - Indexed: October 25, 2008, 9:39 am - Page Size: 99KB |