Apple’s Steve Jobs posts a detailed article that highlights some of the things they are doing to reduce the environmental impact of their products.

As alluded to in the article’s opening paragraph, this no doubt is a response to Greenpeace’s Green My Apple campaign.

Greenpeace’s campaign site announces a “change in policy” from Apple - it seems to me that the “change in policy” is that Apple are disclosing what they are doing - their environmental policies haven’t changed, as far as I can tell anyway. The tone of Jobs’ statement is that they are already doing the things outlined or have had plans for the future for some time (though we don’t know for sure). Many of the points he mentions seem to have been occurring for some time already.

Just one note on the recycling point - the last time I checked (a few months ago), Apple Australia - which is a separate company to the parent US company - does not have a recycling or take-back program in place. Although they claimed some stores had a recycling program, the stores they mentioned did not confirm Apple’s claims.

In Jobs’ announcement, he states that Apple ” operate[s] recycling programs in countries where more than 82% of all Macs and iPods are sold” - but Australia doesn’t seem to be one of those countries.

Does anyone know if Apple Australia is planning on changing this? (or perhaps already has?)

Update: Treehugger asks another interesting question: given Apple’s market position as an innovator, Justin suggests “There are many other steps Apple could make to be an innovative green company. How about tree-free paper for all printed materials, moving over to 100% renewable power, or designing Apple stores and offices to be green buildings?”