Apple has “unique” green credentials

Posted on 22 Jun 2009 at 12:10

Apple can justifiably claim to make the greenest portable computers, even if it tends a little towards hyperbole, a US advertising regulator has concluded.

Following an investigation of a complaint by Dell, NAD, the National Advertising Division of the Council of Better Business Bureaus, said Apple was “unique” in having chosen only to produce laptops that meet the highest EPEAT environmental standards.

“While other manufacturers may have subcategories of lines with similar ratings, none has comparable high ratings for all of the notebooks it produces,” NAD said.

Dell asked NAD to examine Apple’s claim that its MacBooks are, “The world’s greenest family of notebooks.”

Not only did NAD back Apple’s green claims, it also said that statement could mislead because it implied that just some of Apple’s laptops are the greenest, not all of them.

“NAD believed that consumers could reasonably take away the message that a ‘family’ of notebooks is a line of products and not all the products produced by a manufacturer,” it said. “Accordingly, NAD recommended that Apple modify its ‘world’s greenest family of notebooks’ claim to make clearer that the basis of comparison is between all MacBooks to all notebooks made by a given competitor.”

However Apple was asked to remove the the reference to “world’s greenest” given the potential for overstatement. NAD noted that some individual Toshiba Portage notebooks have a higher EPEAT rating than MacBooks.

Apple thanked NAD for confirming its green credentials in a “thoughtful review” of the issues.

Author: Simon Aughton

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