Monday, October 15, 2007

Greenpeace disses the iPhone

Of all the hundreds of thousands of articles on the iPhone, here's one that managed to standout courtesy of Silicon Alley Insider. Apparently Greenpeace did some scientific tests that found the iphone has some hazardous substances that other phone makers have managed to eliminate. And this despite the claims by Steve Jobs that Apple would be ahead of its phone competitors on green issues. Here's what they said:

International — Scientific tests, arranged by Greenpeace, reveal that Apple's iPhone contains hazardous chemicals. The tests uncovered two types of hazardous substances, some of which have already been eliminated by other mobile phone makers.

In May, due to our successful Green my Apple campaign Steve Jobs, the boss of Apple, claimed: "Apple is ahead of, or will soon be ahead of, most of its competitors" on environmental issues.

We watched closely when the iPhone was launched in June for any mention of the green features of the phone from Apple. There was none.

So we bought a new iPhone in June and sent it our Research Laboratories in the UK. Analysis revealed that the iPhone contains toxic brominated compounds (indicating the prescence of brominated flame retardants (BFRs)) and hazardous PVC. The findings are detailed in the report, "Missed call: the iPhone's hazardous chemicals"

There have been thousands of media articles about the iPhone. Few of them have discussed the phone's environmental credentials.

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