The Environment

Energy use.

The way we see it, the energy a product consumes when you plug it in and use it contributes significantly to the environmental footprint of the company that made it. It also contributes significantly to your environmental footprint. That’s why Apple designs products to be energy efficient. In fact, every new Mac meets the strict low-power requirements of the ENERGY STAR specification. Lower power consumption reduces energy bills and lessens the environmental impact of greenhouse gas emissions from power plants.

Power management.

There are three ways to reduce a product’s energy consumption: Use more efficient power supplies, use components that require less power, and use power management software. Because Apple makes both the hardware and the software for our systems, we are able to use all three of these methods.

Apple custom-designs highly efficient power supplies to reduce the amount of power wasted when bringing electricity from the wall to your computer. And unlike a lot of Windows-based PC systems, Mac systems use energy-efficient hardware components that work hand in hand with the operating system to conserve power. Mac OS X spins down hard drives, activating sleep mode on already energy-efficient LED displays. And it balances tasks across both central processors and graphics processors. Mac OS X never misses a power-saving opportunity, no matter how small. It even regulates the processor between keystrokes, reducing power between every letter you type. That’s just one of many ways Apple manages small amounts of power that add up to big savings.

The current iMac is a perfect example of Apple’s energy-efficient design philosophy. It delivers a 30 percent decrease in energy consumption in idle mode compared with its predecessor. That results in an 18 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions over a four-year period. The carbon emission savings on this iMac product transition alone is nearly equivalent to all the emissions generated by our facilities.

ENERGY STAR certification.

Every single computer in our product line is ENERGY STAR compliant. Apple is the only company in our industry that can make this claim. Mac desktops and portables even met the latest efficiency requirements of the ENERGY STAR Version 5.0 Specification for Computers before its July 2009 effective date. ENERGY STAR 5.0 sets significantly higher efficiency limits for power supplies and aggressive limits for the computer’s typical annual power consumption. Not only do energy-efficient designs save energy, they also lessen the single biggest product contributor to greenhouse gas emissions. Visit the ENERGY STAR site

Longer-lasting products.

Apple designs products that last. The built-in battery in MacBook Pro is a perfect example. Other notebook batteries can be charged only 200 to 300 times. The MacBook Pro battery can be charged up to 1000 times.¹ And because this battery lasts up to five years, MacBook Pro uses just one battery in about the same time a typical notebook uses three. That saves you money, produces less waste, and increases the lifespan of your MacBook Pro.

Highly recyclable products.

When your Mac finally reaches the end of its long life, the raw materials used to create it can be reused in other products. Apple products are made of high-quality materials such as aluminum, polycarbonate, and glass, making them extremely valuable to recyclers.