Environmentally Friendly Computing Products – The MacBook Air Technology context Environmentally Friendly Computing Products – The MacBook Air

Introduction: Our brief for this particular unit, was to find an environmentally friendly electronic product that has had a positive impact on the environment, rather than a negative impact that the majority of products these days can cause.

Background information In today’s world, we as consumers must be conscience about the impact we have on our environment on a daily basis. We are using increasingly more of the world’s resources and demanding more from our electrical goods and technology, such as computers, mobile phones and the internet. Manufacturers must find alternative ways in which they can produce products that can help the consumer in reducing their usage and be able to manufacture products that comply with environmental regulations, in terms of the resources they use and materials they are made from.

MY ECO-FRIENDLY PRODUCT With this in mind, the product I have chosen to report about is the Apple MacBook Air. I chose this product as it is renowned for its advances in creating high quality, feature packed but at a fraction of the cost to our environment. This product uses many different alternatives in the manufacture process that make it environmentally friendly, compared to another device of a similar specification.

The macbook air The reason I chose this is because it has received praise from credible sources and has awards for being one of the most environmentally friendly and recyclable item in computing. This product has a positive impact due the materials used in manufacturing, for example the use of less harmful toxins that can be spread into the air once disposed of and it’s aluminium shell, which is recyclable.

Harmful Toxins There are many harmful toxins used in the manufacture of electronics as they are cheap to make and are an easy solution to use instead of finding alternatives that would help towards sustainable development as this can be expensive and involve a lot of time in research. One of the main harmful toxins used to date is Arsenic

Harmful toxins - arsenic This is a nasty chemical that cause a lot of damage to our environment. The reason for using such a chemical in production is to simply remove the 'bubbles' formed in the glass during manufacture.  Now that is a very useless and thoughtless use of a chemical, especially one that has more harmful effects than good. The effects this chemical can cause is due to leakage into the ground after disposal, causing poisoning to soil which in turn can end up poisoning rivers and even food.

Alternatives This is where the Apple MacBook Air gets its accreditation for not using such a chemical. Apple produced the MacBook Air without using Arsenic and not only is it the MacBook Air, Apple are starting to roll out across all their products a environmental policy, where they intend to produce all products with as many alternatives to ensure they can be seen as a company to be taking an active roll in protecting our environment.

Other environmentally friendly factors As well as using alternative chemicals in the manufacturing process, such as aluminium shells, which are recyclable after the product has reached its end of life, the MacBook Air is incredibly thin, meaning less packaging is used and also meaning more items can be shipped per order, saving on fuel costs and making a positive impact on Apple’s carbon footprint.

Carbon emissions As you can see from the image to the right, Apple have reduced their carbon emissions by 12% on MacBook's made in 2010 compared with MacBook's made in 2006. This may only be a small figure but this makes a big difference when there are millions of this item being shipped around the world.

Social behaviour The effects that the MacBook Air along with other Apple products have had on the social behaviour of the consumer have been on a positive impact. The reasoning for this is because there has been a lot of discussion about ensuring we take action in becoming more environmentally friendly and by purchasing such a product, consumers feel like they are doing their part and playing an active role in sustainable manufacturing and helping to reduce our consumption of natural resources as well as preventing the amount of toxic chemicals and waste we produce due to electronic products.

Sales impact The effect this has had on Apples sales has also been one of a positive nature! Sales of the MacBook Air have increased. For the Apple Reports First Quarter Results for 2010, they sold 3.36 million Macintosh® computers during the quarter, representing a 33% unit increase over the year-ago quarter.

Brand IMAGE Due to the increase in MacBook Air Sales, the brand image of Apple has been boosted and proves to the consumer that great quality, high specification products can be made at a fraction of the cost to the environment and at a reasonable price to the consumer.

An eco-friendly conclusion Finally it should be made clear to all manufactures and electronics companies, that manufacturing electronic goods should not cost the earth and should have a positive impact on our day to day lives, to ensure that our valuable resources are not wasted and can be available to us for future generations. Thank you for watching/reading this presentation. For more information, either search for eco- friendly computing or email me at: ece00285@myport.ac.uk

References Article Extracts taken from: Enviromentaly Friendly Computing By Liam MacLeod (B101 Coursework) Year: 2010 Images Taken from: Google Images: http://google.co.uk/images