Rotten to the core?

Despite ranking a creditable 5th in Greenpeace's Greener Electronics guide, Apple fares less well on ethical use of labour. Those paying premium prices for the new iPad might be dismayed to learn that it is built by workers in a military-style factory in China, which is now in the spotlight for its high suicide rate among workers.

300,000 people work at the Foxconn factory, where they are forbidden to talk on the production line, even during breaks; many have complained of feeling lonely and alienated. These conditions, combined with massive demand for products like the 2M-selling iPad, appears to have placed an intolerable strain on workers, who are quitting the Longhua factory at the rate of 15,000 a month.

Workers have routinely worked more than 70 hours a week to fulfill orders. However, Apple maintains that Foxconn, which is one of Apple's primary suppliers, is not a sweatshop. Nevertheless, Foxconn has just agreed to immediately raise the basic salaries of its workers by a third, from £90 per month to £120.

You can read more on this story here, and from a marketing viewpoint here.

Note to Greenpeace - it's not about the polar bears!

I spotted a banner on the excellent Greenbang site from Greenpeace, which is exhorting us to save the polar bear by donating £3 per month. Surely this kind of "save the fluffy animals" approach to climate change is way out of date? It's not that I don't care about the polar bears, but much more is at stake. And photos of cute creatures simply trivialise the largest single threat to mankind ever. It's our own extinction we're facing, not some animal most of us have only encountered in zoos.

It's not that I don't applaud Greenpeace's work, I just think they need better ads - especially on a site like Greenbang, which is likely to attract readers already quite well informed on climate issues. Any species going extinct is a bad thing - but if we can save ourselves, the polar bears will survive too.

HP - the final frontier?

Captain Kirk (aka William Shatner) has declared war on HP over its continued use of toxic chemicals in IT products. In an action backed by Greenpeace, Shatner's voice was used in a recorded message that greeted HP staff arriving at their desks at its Palo Alto HQ. Greenpeace claims HP has gone back on a commitment to stop using brominated flame retardants and PVC in its products by 2009, and that its environmental record is poor compared to competitors like Acer, Apple, Dell and Lenovo.

Activists also painted the words "Hazardous Products" in (non-toxic finger) paint on the roof of HP's HQ.

Greenpeace Cool IT Challenge

A new campaign by Greenpeace builds on the experience of the Greenpeace Guide to Greener Electronics by seeking to engage public pressure - and a little humour - to move IT industry giants towards action on climate change. Greenpeace wants the IT industry movers and shakers to adopt a leadership role in the run-up to Copenhagen. According to the Smart2020 report, although the IT industry is responsible for 2% of global emissions, it has the technology to enable 15% cuts across the industry, buildings, transport and power sectors. And it's this potential that Greenpeace wants to harness with its new Cool IT campaign.

It has a Green CEO league table and a scorecard showing the progress of the twelve chosen organisations towards three key objectives:

• Providing IT solutions and accurately measuring the impacts these solutions provide for the rest of the economy (in areas such as grid transmission, transport and building efficiency);
• Lobbying for a strong climate deal in Copenhagen that would stimulate an increase in demand for IT-driven climate solutions by the rest of the economy; and
• Reducing their own emissions and increasing their use of renewable energy.

Visitors to the site are encouraged to join up, choose 5 CEOs to follow, invite their friends and follow the campaign via Twitter and blogs. Greenpeace says it will update the campaign regularly in the run-up to Copenhagen.

It's an interesting idea, and it's good that Greenpeace are trying to extend their reach into the maintream, but the idea seems a little simplistic and the rating system relies too heavily on what companies say, rather than what they do. there's a danger here that it's the greenwashers that emerge the heroes, and that won't benefit either Greenpeace's credibility or the climate change debate.

The Age of Stupid - The People's Premiere

The Age of Stupid is a new film about climate change and on Sunday 15th March it hits our screens with the World's first INclusive premiere. Unlike those stuffy carbon-heavy red-carpet affairs that stars fly to from all over the world, The Age Of Stupid will be screened in a solar powered tent in Leicester Square and linked via satellite with over 60 cinemas across the UK including The Eden Project. 16,000 people are expected to attend - making it officially the largest ever premiere. Pete Postlethwaite, who stars as the narrator of the film, will arrive by solar car and will be joined on the green carpet by a glittering array of British talent all lending their support to the film and the new climate campaign, Not Stupid, supported by Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace and Stop Climate Chaos.

According to the official synopsis, The Age Of Stupid is a documentary-drama-animation hybrid from Director Franny Armstrong (McLibel, Drowned Out) and Oscar-winning Producer John Battsek (One Day In September, Live Forever, In the Shadow of the Moon). Pete Postlethwaite (In The Name of the Father, Brassed Off, The Usual Suspects) stars as an old man living in the devastated world of 2055 who watches 'archive' footage from 2008 and asks: Why didn't we stop climate change when we had the chance?

The movie focuses on six human stories:
- Alvin DuVernay, is a paleontogolist helping Shell find more oil off the coast of New Orleans. He also rescued more than 100 people after Hurricane Katrina, which, by 2055, is well known as one of the first “major climate change events”.
- Jeh Wadia in Mumbai aims to start-up a new low-cost airline and gets a million Indians flying.
- Layefa Malemi lives in absolute poverty in a small village in Nigeria from which Shell extracts tens of millions of dollars worth of oil every week. She dreams of becoming a doctor, but must fish in the oil-infested waters for four years to raise the funds.
- Jamila Bayyoud, aged 8, is an Iraqi refugee living on the streets of Jordan after her home was destroyed - and father killed - during the US-led invasion of 2003. She’s trying to help her elder brother make it across the border to safety.
- Piers Guy is a windfarm developer from Cornwall fighting the NIMBYs of Middle England.
- Fernand Pareau, an 82-year-old French mountain guide, has witnessed his beloved Alpine glaciers melt by 150 metres.

The climax of the evening will be the official launch of the Not Stupid campaign, when Pete Postlethwaite will start a giant countdown to the Copenhagen Climate Summit in December. Copenhagen is being called “the most important meeting in human history”, where the successor to the Kyoto Treaty must be finalised. Not Stupid is an epic mission to turn 250 million viewers into climate activists, all focused on making sure the deal agreed at Copenhagen is both just and truly as strong as the science demands. More information on taking part from the official website.

Corn phones revive food vs. energy debate

Samsung has proudly reported that its new E200 phone is made of “bio-plastic,” which it claims is better for the environment because it's naturally extracted from corn rather than hydrocarbons. Apparently, each ton of bio-plastic saves two tons of CO2 emissions compared with oil-based plastic. So far, so green - but isn't corn a food crop? Hasn't Samsung heard the debate about the impact on world food supplies - and prices - caused by increased demand for bio-diesels and bio-plastics?

Samsung also boasts that this phone and its charger are also free from "harmful bromine-infused flame retardants" - but I thought these had been banned throught the EU a couple of years back under the RoHS directive anyway. Samsung is a huge global corporation and one of the World's top 10 brands - a fact which earns it instant credibility with the majority of consumers who don't have the time or inclination to examine green claims. I wonder how it will perform in next year's Greenpeace Green Electronics Guide?