First, for those of you that might have missed it, a few days ago Apple decided to pull all of their products from EPEAT (Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool) testing. Although they did not cite any reasons the prime suspect is that Apple is moving toward disposable products. These are products that are not upgradable, not-repairable and have a built in life span (usually the length of the built in battery). The trend has been growing for a while, but has been fully realize in both the “New” iPad and the MacBook Pro Retina. One of the criteria for EPEAT certification is easy disassembly for recycling, which is something that many of the newer Apple products just are not.

Of course the question is, why not just pull those products that are not EPEAT friendly? Well there is a reason for that too. You see, if Apple only pulls their newest products from testing it make them look like they are actually making less green products as they progress and not maintaining the green standard they like to claim (although Greenpeace and others will argue that they are not that green at all). It really does call out their trend and might impact their public image. So Apple pulled the entire range and tried to push out the spin that they were still very green, just in ways that EPEAT (a standard they helped to create) does not cover. It is sort of like someone saying “I have a girlfriend, but she goes to another school so you won’t know her”.

Apple felt (quite wrongly) that they would not see any impact from this and that their statement would be enough to calm all of their customers. Instead we saw the news media catch this one and call them out for both the initial move to pull their products from testing (many which already had certification) and then their lame attempt to spin it back in their favor. Apple also had some other unexpected impact as they discovered that many corporations and the governmental agencies will not even consider Apple products unless they have EPEAT certification. The city of San Francisco made a public statement that they would no longer purchase Apple products because of it.

Now Apple is back with the program, but is all forgiven? We sort of doubt it at this point. Although the fun and excitement around this will slowly calm down we have a feeling that many companies and agencies that were once very pro-Apple might begin to look at them in another light. When you tie this in with their increasingly obnoxious attempts to patent other people’s technology for the purposes of later suing the competition and lingering concerns about working conditions at Foxconn we could very well be seeing the eroding of Apple’s public image. It is something that we knew would happen, but we figured it would not start until much later. It will be interesting to see how all of this factors into Apple’s future sales.

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