Comments on: Apple Stores Are Eco-Friendly–To a Point

By: Daniel Reiser

Daniel Reiser — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 03:34:52 +0000

I’m not sure what the point of this story is. Apple stores are about pushing a retail presence and selling more product. Even if the stores were re-used dairy barns, the underlying concept (i.e. promoting a consumerist lifestyle) would still be problematic for the environment.

I’m an architect and I can tell you for sure that 99.5% of what gets built today is detrimental to the environment, even when the architects and engineers do their best.

So basically, few buildings constructed after the Industrial Revolution could be considered green. It’s easy to get caught up in the “movement,” and architects want to talk up their environmental stance, but they won’t hesitate to spend extra client dollars on expensive eco-bling, add aluminum and stainless steel where appropriate, and take aesthetic shortcuts that compromise any real environmental agenda.

By: Sweet Jesus

Sweet Jesus — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 21:00:37 +0000

Laminated glass – stairs, storefronts – is not readily, if at all, recyclable. And an AC-ed greenhouse in the middle of Sydney, Australia, with no low energy coating, is far from green. Ditto no insulation in the New York winter (cube).

“…but it’s not clear how environmentally friendly the window or staircase glass really is.”

The glass is this eco-friendly: not at all.

Aluminum and steel also have a high embodied energy and poor insulation values. Don’t kid yourselves – the stores are, on the whole, definitely not green!

By: Johnny Mozzarella

Johnny Mozzarella — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 19:23:30 +0000

From what I know of their operations, they are as close to a paperless office as I’ve seen in actual practice.
They email receipts.
Rebates are submitted electronically.

The plastic bags are high quality and the ones I tend to save reuse the most. Also they have made a concerted effort to use less and less packaging. And the boxes that ipods and iPhones come in are nice enough that I bet few people toss them.

By: MumboJumbo

MumboJumbo — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 21:22:19 +0000

Lets not get into the amount of T-shirts employees get given in a year or quarter. And since they are ” Apple ” property they do not allow them to be given to charity. But there there is no serial # to track them or names if someone was to give them away.
Apple stores have no recycle program for waste of paper until this year. But how many retailers offer a emailed receipt?
Gr$£££n Peace my Arse!

By: Brian Kaempen

Brian Kaempen — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 03:11:56 +0000

Again I’ll speak for the North Michigan Avenue store. I know that in the summertime, both main doors are wide open, and you can feel the AC from about 10′ away-not at all environmental. Then again, the store was at one point the top earner, so how much do we think Apple cares about being “green”? They put on a good face, especially to Greenpeace which I see all around Chicago a lot, but we don’t really now how much is going on until they publish some real stats.

-Brian

FWIW, when my MBP’s batteries both started expanding, Apple took back both batteries.

By: mark

mark — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 19:13:30 +0000

as an employee i can only say sorry to the guy named mike
he was given wrong information at the store
apple will take an battery or any old product and we collect it and every week or once a month depending on how much we have, we send it to corporate and they dispose of it properly

By: Mike

Mike — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 16:43:17 +0000

I was shocked to find out that if you buy a replacement battery at an Apple Store, they will not take back the old battery for recycling. This happened to me at San Diego Fashion Valley. They told me to just throw it in the trash.

By: Howie Isaacks

Howie Isaacks — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 13:58:01 +0000

If the Apple wants its stores to be more “green”, they should stop using the plastic shopping bags. I think that makes a bigger impact. How many Apple store customers recycle those bags? I worry more about the plastic bags that we get from Apple stores and other retail operations ending up in landfills than I worry about transporting building materials to the stores. I am not a believer in Al Gore’s global warming crisis so, it doesn’t bother me at all to find out that Apple is importing material from far away sources.