No, I’m not writing about Apple just because they are an apple and we highlight good apples on the PosiPeople blog. Rather, I am writing about Apple because it is taking a leadership role in its industry in producing products and protecting the environment at the same time.

Not only does Apple recycle any iPod or cell phone, regardless of manufacturer, for free, but it also has consistently created products that have low energy consumption, and have little use of harmful chemicals.

In addition, Apple is setting a tremendous precedent by publishing a environment impact report that, I hope, will be published annually and will force competitors to publish annually. Before you dismiss it as a poor attempt at quantifying its environmental impact, you should read it closely. This report is pretty in depth and broad. It covers topics such as responsible manufacturing, energy efficiency, recycling, and product design.

Apple has a list of chemicals that they have banned from products and manufacturing such as Arsenic and Brominated Flame Retardants. In addition, many of Apple’s products exceed Energy Star efficiency ratings. (Did you know that Apple was a founding member of the Environmental Protection Agency’s Energy Star program?) Furthermore, Apple generates less waste by limiting the amount of packaging used in delivering its products to consumers.

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Jon’s blog entry about environmentally-sensitive household cleaners reminded me of another environmental issue that we face at the grocery store: paper or plastic? I am not referring to the bags used to package your groceries so that you can carry them out of the store. I mean the ones that you put individual items into to make it easier for the cashier. For example, I put each vegetable or fruit into a separate plastic bag so that it is easier to ring up at the cash register. On an average trip to the store, I might come home with 8-10 plastic bags of fruit, vegetables, or bulk food. I am hardly alone. Collectively, US consumers use between 500 billion and 1 trillion bags a year.

I am considering making the switch to using cloth bags when I shop for groceries. (I have no connection to this company and have only seen their products on the internet. I would be curious to hear other people’s experiences with cloth bags. Are they large enough? How many do you need? Can cashiers correctly read the produce item number without opening the bag?)

There are other steps consumers can take to minimize the environmental impact of their plastic bag usage beside switching to cloth. Stores and recycling centers will accept plastic bags. (You can find one that recycles near you.) You can also reuse plastic bags at the grocery store for shopping or at home as trash can liners, storage bags, food storage, and the list goes on.

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About the Author

Bea Bezmalinovic Dhebar is encouraged by the creativity, diversity, diffusion and fusion of ideas taking place among people around the world. She is particularly interested in the ways in which new entrepreneurial ventures - whether led by business, government or non-governmental organizations - can make a difference in our quality of life. Bea has worked extensively on international health and development issues with organizations as varied as Management Sciences for Health, the NetAid Foundation, Harvard Business School, Harvard School of Public Health, Partners in Population and Development, Save the Children, Aid to Artisans, the US Agency for International Development, the Overseas Development Council, and the International Center for Research on Women. She has lived or worked in more than 25 countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Bea received a Masters in Public Policy from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and recently returned to get an MBA from Babson College. She is fluent in Spanish and has some knowledge of Portuguese and Bengali.

I get a lot of catalogs in the mail. Really. In fact, I received 14 catalogs in one day last fall, all of which I threw away. I would guess that I tossed out at least $15 in marketing materials (including postage) on that day alone. If the marketers in those companies only knew how wasted their efforts were, they wouldn’t bother sending a catalog to me. (There must be someone who wants kitschy country kitchen products, but it really isn’t me.) Anyway, if they knew, they wouldn’t waste paper or money and I wouldn’t have to recycle as often.

And now, thanks to a joint effort by the National Wildlife Federation, the Natural Resources Defense Council, and the Ecology Center, consumers can make their preferences known. You can log in and indicate online which catalogs you do not want to receive. Catalog Choice relays requests en masse to specific retailers. Retailers can use this information to “clean” their lists. I went online to sign up and unsubscribe to at a few of the multitude of catalogs that I get. It is easy to do. A word of advice: you must enter your name exactly as it appears on the catalog to really unsubscribe. In my case, one of the reasons that I get so many catalogs is that there are different versions of my name on the address. I may have to log in and unsubscribe repeatedly to really get rid of some of those catalogs.

This is a nice win-win-win for consumers, retailers, and trees. It probably is bad news for the U.S. Postal Service though.

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About the Author

Bea Bezmalinovic Dhebar is encouraged by the creativity, diversity, diffusion and fusion of ideas taking place among people around the world. She is particularly interested in the ways in which new entrepreneurial ventures - whether led by business, government or non-governmental organizations - can make a difference in our quality of life. Bea has worked extensively on international health and development issues with organizations as varied as Management Sciences for Health, the NetAid Foundation, Harvard Business School, Harvard School of Public Health, Partners in Population and Development, Save the Children, Aid to Artisans, the US Agency for International Development, the Overseas Development Council, and the International Center for Research on Women. She has lived or worked in more than 25 countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Bea received a Masters in Public Policy from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and recently returned to get an MBA from Babson College. She is fluent in Spanish and has some knowledge of Portuguese and Bengali.