Apple may be the king of technology in the eyes of most but I just read an article today that says that, according to Greenpeace, Apple is at the bottom of the 'green league table of technology companies' due to it's "heavy reliance on dirty data centres." That's going to put a nice dent in their reputation methinks.



Apparently the company relies heavily on coal power to operate the sites where their banks of servers are located, and, of course, coal is one of the most highly polluting substances. Apple's investment in a new North Carolina facility will TRIPLE its electricity consumption which is equivalent to the electricity demand of 80,000 average US homes. Apple probably doesn't care right now as they are benefiting nicely from from these energy expenditures and their quarterly earnings have recently grown by 95% to $US 6 billion. Silly money! It makes me sick how the corporate world works. Apple needs to follow its own message and start 'Think(ing) different(ly) about the way it operates.

Of course, Greenpeace could only go on publicly available information and make estimates but companies are never going to disclose their real energy consumption nor are they required to so it wouldn't surprise me if the situation was even worse!

At the other end of the spectrum, the report also disclosed that Yahoo scored highly in the clean energy index followed by Google and Amazon!

Is that enough to put you off buying the next Mac Book Pro..?