Apple quits ‘green’ certificate program

Apple will no longer offer its products for approval to Epeat, an organization that hands out ‘green’ certificates. It is unclear why the manufacturer is discontinuing this: it previously obtained an Epeat certificate for many products.

Epeat made the news itself known on its website, with the organization indicating that Apple will no longer offer its products for review. The manufacturer also wants products that have already received an Epeat certificate to be removed from the list. Epeat CEO Robert Frisbee told The Wall Street Journal that Apple can no longer agree with the terms of the organization. However, the Cupertino company did not want to make a statement, so the exact reason remains unclear.

It is striking that Apple is withdrawing its products from Epeat: the certificate organization receives support from the American government, which requires that 95 percent of the products sold have such a ‘green’ certificate. It may have something to do with the requirement that Epeat certified products must be easy to disassemble in order to be recycled. In recent years, Apple has made it more difficult to replace parts or take devices apart.

Earlier, Apple tried to boost its ‘green’ image: the company contradicted Greenpeace claims about polluting data centers and also came up with plans to run a data center entirely on green energy.