Earlier this month Steve Jobs posted a response, entitled “A Greener Apple”, to the various allegations against Apple’s eco-friendliness by Greenpeace. In the article, Jobs lays out a more transparent view of Apple’s current and future plans towards being green by noting their efforts to remove toxic chemicals and recycling of older products. He also spends an inordinate amount of time saying that their processes will only get better in the future. (Somehow, I think this is obvious, but no matter.)
It’s certainly nice to see Jobs finally responding to Greenpeace. The group has been dogging Apple with environmental complaints since 2004, even going so far as to create a dedicated website to voice their complaints and allow consumers to join in. It did certainly seem ironic that Apple, a brand synonymous with everything hip and progressive, and a company that has held Al Gore in its board of directors since 2003, has taken so long to address the situation.
I was content with Jobs’ response until I had the pleasure of opening a few packages from the Apple Store at work this past week. The order was for a wireless keyboard and a 13″ sleeve for a Macbook, but you couldn’t guess that judging from the boxes that arrived. Not only were the boxes disproportionally large, but to make up for that they were also stuffed to the brim with filler paper. Needless to say, it was disheartening to see a supposedly “green” company rely on such innefficient packaging practices.
Here are some pictures of the items ordered next to their packaging. Overkill is the word to keep in mind here.
Thankfully, all of these packaging materials are recyclable. But while I give them kudos for that, it still seems incredibly wasteful. I’ve never seen packaging like this for any of my orders from Amazon or Newegg. Given my job in desktop support (not to mention my geeky proclivities), you should know I’ve seen many variations on the art of package shipping.
Now to give you an idea how much paper was stuffed in these two boxes, I present to you my recycle bin: It was only 1/4 full when I opened it, but after stuffing the paper in the bin was completely full! This isn’t a small bin either, I would wager that it’s slightly over 5′ tall.
I’m not entirely sure if this is a widespread problem, but I will definitely be keeping a closer eye on future Apple Store orders now. While their computers are shipped in very compact and form-fitting boxes, it just seems that the same doesn’t appear to hold true for peripherals.
Update 1: I would just like to clarify the general point I’m trying to make here, because it seems as if some folks are confused about it. I realize that proper packaging is incredibly important when shipping expensive products, but that really isn’t the point here. Apple could just as easily secure these items with more efficient packaging if the boxes were smaller. I stupidly forgot to take a picture of the items in the boxes on their own, but trust me when I say that the boxes were much bigger than they needed to be.
I think this picture best illustrates what I’m trying to say. The box on the right was for the wireless keyboard, and the other for the laptop sleeve. As you can plainly see, the height of these boxes are far beyond that of the items they’re holding. What I’m most annoyed about is the horrible inefficiency of these packages. All they really needed was smaller boxes!
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