The aluminum Mac 'Brick' -- is it green?
So Apple has once again managed to get the world all excited about some fancy new device, in this case an updated MacBook laptop computer. Among other wrinkles, Apple will carve these MacBooks out of solid blocks of aluminum.
The advantages, the company says, are unsurpassed style and ultralight weight. But I'm only concerned about one thing: Is this thing going to save the earth, or destroy it?
The answer, it turns out, is a little of both.
The new process slices a half-pound computer case out of a 2.5 lb brick of highly processed aluminum. So right off the bat, Apple is creating a block of metal with a huge amount of embodied energy (from the mine through the final milling process), the vast majority of which goes into the recycling bin to be re-melted and re-processed.
Green? I think not.
The current MacBook cases (I'm typing on one right now) are simple, hard, white plastic. They're just as durable, and take far less energy to produce than a 2.5 lb brick of highly milled aluminum. I'm not sure what the advantage with the new casing is, but it's certainly not sustainability. And aluminum is certainly not as green as some of the bamboo cases we've seen.
Apple's gadgets can sometimes be extremely difficult to repair. Aluminum-cased iPods often can't be repaired without scrapping the case entirely, obviously a big environmental no-no. Whether this will be true with the new MacBook remains to be seen.
But on other fronts, the new MacBooks are chock-full of green cred.
They're rated EPEAT Gold, a measure of environmental friendliness for computers, something only a handful of other computers boast. They contain no mercury, no BFRs, no lead, and the LCD screens are backlit by highly efficient LEDs. The new MacBooks may even be just as green as the MacBook Air.
I'm glad to see Apple focusing on the efficiency of their computers, not to mention decreasing the amount of toxic materials they contain. But this new carved-brick process isn't green; it's wasteful. I'm happy to be sticking with my good ol' plastic clunker.
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