Apple Already Records Loss in Mac Sales After EPEAT Withdrawal

Apple has released a statement to justify the company’s decision this week to pull out of the EPEAT rating, which tracks environmental factors inside electronics. Apple believes it’s better than the EPEAT when it comes to its designs.

EPEAT monitors the environmental impact of electronics. The standard was actually helped by Apple to get instated several years ago, according to The Telegraph. The Mac maker now wants out.

“Apple takes a comprehensive approach to measuring our environmental impact and all of our products meet the strictest energy efficiency standards backed by the US government, Energy Star 5.2,” said Kristin Huguet, a spokeswoman for Apple.

“We also lead the industry by reporting each product’s greenhouse gas emissions on our website, and Apple products are superior in other important environmental areas not measured by EPEAT, such as removal of toxic materials.”

In other words, Apple believes the EPEAT rating no longer works for things like the new MacBook Pro with Retina display, the MacBook Air, and other systems. In fact, the EPEAT doesn’t even track iPads, and Apple relies heavily on tablet sales for profits.

“We regret that Apple will no longer be registering its products in EPEAT,” the environmental group said on its website. “We hope that they will decide to do so again at some point in future.”

50 departments and 28,000 employees in San Francisco will no longer be able to use city funds to buy Apple computers, and the University of California (the largest US public higher-education system) is considering withdrawal as well, because of Apple’s swift decision.

Bill Allison, head of campus technology services at the Berkeley campus, commented, “When something like this happens, it’s a significant change in the landscape. We’re reviewing the impact of this.”

Allison added that the school would continue to discuss the matter with Apple and administrators at the university to assess the situation and find alternatives.