Myth 2: Greenpeace Toxic Apple Panic
Myth 2: Greenpeace Toxic Apple Panic
Greenpeace began a new fundraising campaign for 2006, specifically targeting Mac users. Why Macs? Because Mac users are typically more affluent and more likely to be interested in environmental issues.
The campaign was the brainchild of Iza Kruszewska, a consultant associated with the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition. The SVTC had earlier determined Mac users to be a good target for donation campaigning, and drew up a custom Apple logo with a worm on handouts that called the iPod “toxic trash.”
Similarly, Greenpeace didn't just hit up Mac users for money; instead, the group decided to launch repeated attacks against Apple in the style of Kruszewska’s earlier action at the SVTC, portraying the company as environmentally callous, prolifically toxic, and hostile to environmentally progressive issues.
A series of reports depicted Apple products as dangerously toxic and ranked Apple at the bottom of a chart listing a random assortment of fourteen tech manufacturers from Nokia to Dell.
The Fallout
Blog panic ensued. Each press release issued by Greenpeace was met with headlines that uncritically regurgitated the story that Apple was the grinch who stole green, and was contaminating the planet with toxic machines.
The only solution, it seemed, was to give Greenpeace money so it would continue to crank out press releases critical of Apple and bring attention to "the issues," whatever they might be.
The high profile campaign was so successful for Greenpeace that the group decided to invest in expensive lab research to test a range of laptops from different manufacturers, the results of which were published in a pamphlet entitled "Toxics in Your Laptop, Exposed!"
While the facts didn't support Greenpeace's claims, the group knew nobody would actually read the highly technical report, so it distributed it along with a sensationalized press release which again pointedly accused Apple of being a poor performer in environmental issues, despite lab results proving the opposite.
The group even set up an entire website devoted to Mac users, which mimics Apple's website and pushes visitors to donate to Greenpeace to assuage their guilt over owning a highly toxic Mac, iPod, or copy of QuickTime.
The Myth, Unwoven
RoughlyDrafted criticized the initial Greenpeace report in the article Top Secret: Greenpeace Report Misleading and Incompetent, explaining that the guide's rankings "puts far more weight upon what companies publicly say rather than what they actually do. It is also clear that Greenpeace intended the report more as an attention getting stunt than a serious rating of corporations' actual responsibility."
A second article, More Secrets: The Scandal of Green Computing, presented additional proof that the Greenpeace campaigns were not only intentionally misleading and misrepresenting facts, but also ignored real environmental issues and actually rewarded companies who contributed the most to the worldwide problems of e-waste. Greenpeace reports targeted Apple, not because of anything related to environment issues, but because falsely vilifying Apple got it attention in the press. The Greenpeace attack on Apple is a self serving misinformation campaign designed to make Greenpeace money, not to create any change in the tech industry.
Greenpeace submitted an ineffectual rebuttal which attacked RoughlyDrafted and ignored the issues raised. It was printed in Greenpeace Apologizes For Apple Stink, along with sneak peek look at the results of the latest Greenpeace report, "Toxic Chemicals in Your Laptop Exposed!"
That report contradicted the earlier claims made by Greenpeace; however, the press release that accompanied it ignored the facts found in the lab to repeat further claims that were not true.
For example, the report cited minimal traces of TBBPA, an unregulated fire retardant, but the Greenpeace press release said Apple "appears to be using far more of this toxic chemical than its competitors," despite knowing that TBBPA "presents no risk to human health." (EU Scientific Committee on Health and Environmental Risks).
More criticism of the Greenpeace press releases followed in Greenpeace Lies About Apple: "The most recent report, 'Toxics in Your Laptop Exposed,' did credible scientific tests, but then threw out the data to instead present a lathered up, misleading and deceptive press release that was simply a lie. No amount of credible science is worth anything if you ignore the findings and simply present the message you wanted to the data to support."
Hiding the Damages
Greenpeace staffers posted a series of astroturf comments on the articles, asserting that facts don't really matter and that the definition of toxic can be anything anyone wants it to mean.
Wikipedia editors added RoughlyDrafted’s criticism to the article on Greenpeace, then deleted the information, then reinstated it. To distract from the actual facts involved, an anonymous editor linked to a blog with personal attacks against RoughlyDrafted by Ian Betteridge, which itself linked to further blog attacks by David Chartier.
Ian Betteridge, a contributor MacUser, called RoughlyDrafted "the lunatic fringe of Mac fandom," while an anonymous MacUser blog repeated accusations that RoughlyDrafted was a "spammer" because articles from the site were submitted to new aggregators. Betteridge later posted blog entries attacking named sources cited in the articles because he couldn’t find them using Google. He did not contact RoughlyDrafted for comment on any of the facts, and carefully avoided mention of any of the actual issues raised.
Greenpeace has since expanded its attacks upon Apple, and is planning to focus more attention on getting money from Mac users in 2007.
News media sources in general have ignored any criticism of the misleading Greenpeace campaigns, choosing instead to simply republish Greenpeace press releases as fact.
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Thursday, December 28, 2006
