Apple retail keeps it green during fire sale
In its latest effort to positively impact the environment, Apple's retail stores have initiated a new "no plastic bags" policy to cut back on the amount of unnecessary packaging it dumps in the hands of shoppers. [Updated 3/9 with image of poster card]
Apple store visitors who make more than handful of purchases in the store are offered assistance to their car or the option of leaving their items at the store while they continue shopping, in the case of retail outlets located in a mall.
The cat is back in the bag
The move reflects the company's efforts to push the envelope in going green, a central feature of both its advertising and product design. The company was among the first to reduce the size of its software packaging and has developed some of the slimmest boxes of any consumer electronics maker. It has also shunned plastic optical media in favor of electronic distribution from iTunes sales to web-based video distribution in iLife and MobileMe.
Getting rid of plastic bags is the next step. The city and county of San Francisco banned plastic shopping bags in grocery stores a year ago, and a variety of US cities have expressed interest in following suit including Austin, Texas; Boston, Massachusetts; Portland, Oregon; and Phoenix, Arizona.
San Francisco now has 5 million fewer of the difficult to recycle plastic bags per month hitting its landfills. Internationally, Paris and London have since enacted similar bans. In Ireland and Germany, shoppers pay a recycling fee for plastic bags, prompting many shoppers to bring their own baskets or carts.
Green despite an inventory fire sale
Apple started its bag-free program this week near the release of a wide range of new Mac models. Inventory checks indicate that the company's retail stores still have a significant supply of previous models; the company usually aims to clear remaining inventory out of the channel before new product launches, but the retail slump has made that difficult to do.
A paper card advertising availability of previous-gen Macs at Apple retail stores this month.
As a result, many Apple retail stores are offering special "end of life" deals on remaining stock until its inventory is depleted. The company isn't advertising the deals publicly, but users interested in new Macs are given the option of buying the new improved Macs that were just released, or purchasing from the remaining inventory of older models at, as one Apple store employee said, "super cheapy prices."
A variety of mail order companies are also offering special discounts on both new models and their existing inventory of previous Macs. In particular, some resellers are offering discounts of $300 to $500 off the original sticker price of previous generation iMacs, who performance was recently shown to be on par with just-released models when strictly talking CPU performance. A comparison of deals is presented in our Mac Price Guide.
Apple store visitors who make more than handful of purchases in the store are offered assistance to their car or the option of leaving their items at the store while they continue shopping, in the case of retail outlets located in a mall.
The cat is back in the bag
The move reflects the company's efforts to push the envelope in going green, a central feature of both its advertising and product design. The company was among the first to reduce the size of its software packaging and has developed some of the slimmest boxes of any consumer electronics maker. It has also shunned plastic optical media in favor of electronic distribution from iTunes sales to web-based video distribution in iLife and MobileMe.
Getting rid of plastic bags is the next step. The city and county of San Francisco banned plastic shopping bags in grocery stores a year ago, and a variety of US cities have expressed interest in following suit including Austin, Texas; Boston, Massachusetts; Portland, Oregon; and Phoenix, Arizona.
San Francisco now has 5 million fewer of the difficult to recycle plastic bags per month hitting its landfills. Internationally, Paris and London have since enacted similar bans. In Ireland and Germany, shoppers pay a recycling fee for plastic bags, prompting many shoppers to bring their own baskets or carts.
Green despite an inventory fire sale
Apple started its bag-free program this week near the release of a wide range of new Mac models. Inventory checks indicate that the company's retail stores still have a significant supply of previous models; the company usually aims to clear remaining inventory out of the channel before new product launches, but the retail slump has made that difficult to do.
A paper card advertising availability of previous-gen Macs at Apple retail stores this month.
As a result, many Apple retail stores are offering special "end of life" deals on remaining stock until its inventory is depleted. The company isn't advertising the deals publicly, but users interested in new Macs are given the option of buying the new improved Macs that were just released, or purchasing from the remaining inventory of older models at, as one Apple store employee said, "super cheapy prices."
A variety of mail order companies are also offering special discounts on both new models and their existing inventory of previous Macs. In particular, some resellers are offering discounts of $300 to $500 off the original sticker price of previous generation iMacs, who performance was recently shown to be on par with just-released models when strictly talking CPU performance. A comparison of deals is presented in our Mac Price Guide.
Comments
"Apple" and "super cheapy prices" seems weird in the same sentence. (Although I wouldn't mind if it happened more often !)
I think you need to keep this in context with what you'd generally expect from Apple. My understanding is that Apple retail stores are offering significant discounts compared to their usual prices, but resellers are going quite a bit further and steeper. That said, some people feel an extra sense of security when buying directly from Apple for whatever reason, and that's why we noted it.
K
But seriously, bravo, Apple (and any other companies that do this). I've had two reusable nylon shopping bags for the last five years and take home maybe 2 plastic bags a month if I'm forgetful. My stash of plastic bags from before that is still enough to give me garbage bags for the next few years.
Mac mini 1.83GHz Intel Core 2 Duo (previous generation)
1GB memory
80GB hard drive
Combo drive (DVD-ROM/CD-RW)
Intel GMA 950 graphics processor with 64MB of DDR2 memory\t
$499.00
\t
Mac mini 2.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo (previous generation)
1GB memory
120GB hard drive
SuperDrive (DVD±R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW)
Intel GMA 950 graphics processor with 64MB of DDR2 memory\t
$549.00
\t
iMac 20-inch 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo (previous generation)
20-inch glossy widescreen display
1GB memory
250GB hard drive
8x SuperDrive (DVD±R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW)
ATI Radeon HD 2400 XT with 128MB memory
Built-in iSight Camera\t
$999.00
\t
iMac 24-inch 2.8GHz Intel Core 2 Duo (previous generation)
24-inch glossy widescreen display
2GB memory
320GB hard drive
8x Superdrive (DVD±R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW)
ATI Radeon HD 2600 PRO with 256MB memoryy
Built-in iSight camera\t
$1,399.00
\t
MacBook Pro 17-inch 2.5GHz Intel Core 2 Duo (previous generation)
17-inch widescreen display
2GB memory
250GB hard drive
8x SuperDrive (DVD±R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW)
NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT with 512MB of GDDR3 memory
Built-in iSight Camera\t
$2,499.00
In its latest effort to positively impact the environment, Apple's retail stores have initiated a new "no plastic bags" policy to cut back on the amount of unnecessary packaging it dumps in the hands of shoppers.
As much as I love Apple's little draw string plastic bags, this is a good move.
The idea that they don't give bags of any kind though is a bit dumb and a bit annoying to me. They should offer paper bags or better yet recyclable plastic ones. Personally, I don't want some obsequious employee following me to the parking lot, and in any case, I don't drive. Is she/he going to follow me home?
Hopefully, this policy will vary by country. The US version of customer service can be very annoying to people from other countries, so maybe they will tone it down across the borders.
Seriously, the least of their worries should be plastic bags and CDs. What about all the energy used to light up their stores to be brighter than the sun, or the fact that they discourage upgradeable machines in favor of totally replacing them when it's time to upgrade.
Nowadays everyone will buy into any company that claims to be green. What these companies won't tell you is that the only things they do to be green are visible to the customer, i.e. what's going on behind the scenes is probably business as usual for these companies that are suddenly enlightened by responsibility to appease the general public.
It's like how my company has reserved parking spaces for Hybrid cars. Please. You are damaging the environment by driving a car that requires so much more energy and material shipping to be produced. Half of the people parked there drive Escape hybrids, which get worse mileage than 99% of cars that an average European would drive around.
And why can't Apple use bags made of recycled paper?
Apple's new aluminum laptop case design is one of the most energy inefficient around. Not only that, but it is one of the most expensive manufacturing processes that could be used to accomplish the result.
I can tell you that I now own the previous generation 17" MacBook Pro 2.5, 4gigs of RAM, and I paid $1499 for it. The end of line prices are not advertised anywhere online and the employees are instructed not to mention them unless the customer asks. I can't remember the prices on everything else but if you are looking to buy a brand new mac for a rediculous discount, do it now.
I'd like to see them go to old school paper shopping bags, like Macy's gives out. Those are not throw-aways, those are keepers, and therefore not as bad landfill-wise. Nice, practical, paper, would look good with an Apple logo on them.
Already mentioned in this thread, but so highly relevant it bears repeating: If you want to really be doing something "green", stop making closed boxes that have little to no upgrade paths.
I pass an Apple store today, I guess I'll ask in person.
Anyone seen deals on previous gen 8 cores?
I pass an Apple store today, I guess I'll ask in person.
About $209 off, not much
http://www.appleinsider.com/mac_price_guide/
Please enlighten us with details of your claims.
Apple is taking a "billet" (solid piece of aluminum) and machining it to shape. There is a lot of waste (the material machined off, although it is capable of being recycled which does save a worthwhile amount of energy compared to refining bauxite (ore)). There are precision casting and other techniques which could accomplish the same result with less waste and less machining...the machining is expensive as well.
What drove the Apple design team to select this manufacturing process is something of a puzzle as it is not a good choice.
Apple is taking a "billet" (solid piece of aluminum) and machining it to shape. There is a lot of waste (the material machined off, although it is capable of being recycled which does save a worthwhile amount of energy compared to refining bauxite (ore)). There are precision casting and other techniques which could accomplish the same result with less waste and less machining...the machining is expensive as well.
Yeah, and I'm sure Apple didn't do their homework on all of this. Steve Jobs just said, "Oh that looks insanely cool! Let's make our laptop cases using that technique, whatever the cost."
If you read up on the actual process, you would know that the "waste" is recycled and put back into making more cases. They outlined their reasons for using this process. I'm sure they looked at many other techniques, but decided this is the best for what they wanted to accomplish.
If they've gone as far as having NO bag options, I'm surprised, but I do like the trend. Cloth bags come in many forms, some of which fold up really small like mine, and the inconvenience of having one in my car, or coat pocket, or hanging on my home doorknob, is trivial.
Yeah, and I'm sure Apple didn't do their homework on all of this. Steve Jobs just said, "Oh that looks insanely cool! Let's make our laptop cases using that technique, whatever the cost."
If you read up on the actual process, you would know that the "waste" is recycled and put back into making more cases. They outlined their reasons for using this process. I'm sure they looked at many other techniques, but decided this is the best for what they wanted to accomplish.
If you had read my post, you would have noticed the recycling of waste. Duh!
You are probably closer to the truth than you are willing to admit with the speculation that Steve said "this is cool".
Already mentioned in this thread, but so highly relevant it bears repeating: If you want to really be doing something "green", stop making closed boxes that have little to no upgrade paths.
Oh please. Macs have been proven to last twice as long as their PC counter parts thanks to Apple's ability to make its OS speedier with each new release. Mac hardware remains relevant long after its PC counterparts have been dumped into landfills.
I can still install and run Leopard on a 6 year PowerBook without any problems. And other than needing a little more memory, it runs just fine.