I have been reading a book authored by
Steve Coll entitled Private Empire, ExxonMobil and American Power.
It details a lot of that
corporations' commercial, political, environmental and humanitarian
history over the past thirty years.
The book raised
several questions in my mind: Can any entity of that size, be and
stay “clean?” Can dealing with governments, politicians,
suppliers, sub-contractors and human populations be any different for
Apple than it is for Exxon Mobil? How can the macro challenges of
making a profit for those two companies really be different from each
other?
America
loves its biggest corporation - Apple*,
and hates its second biggest – Exxon Mobil*.
Around the world we have tigers in our tanks and iPhones in our
pockets. Is it simply the “cool” factor that differentiates the
two? Is one really “cleaner” than the other?
I thought I would
do a simple comparison: What is the carbon footprint of an iPhone vs
the carbon footprint of one gallon of gasoline?
Here
is a link to Apple's site about their emissions:
http://www.apple.com/environment/
Here they tout the decrease in their carbon footprint as a percentage
of total revenue. (Might this decrease be more driven by their revenue
increases than the carbon emission decreases?)
Both web links read like
corporate speak to me so I went looking for other data. I came across
the Carbon Disclosure Project
https://www.cdproject.net/en-US/Pages/HomePage.aspx.
(Here is a Wkipedia link about the project
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_Disclosure_Project.)
I signed up and went diving for data.
Yearly data is listed there for Exxon
Mobil but Apple stopped participating in the project in 2010. Now, I
am sure Apple has a litany of good corporate bureaucratic reasons not
to participate but it makes me wonder, what they are hiding?
I did find a Pacific Gas and
Electric statement
http://www.pge.com/about/environment/calculator/assumptions.shtml
based on an USEPA publication that
“Burning 1 gallon
of gasoline produces 19.4 lbs CO2.”
Apple http://images.apple.com/environment/reports/docs/iPhone5_product_environmental_report_sept2012.pdf lists iPhone 5 as have "Total greenhouse gas emissions: 75 kg (165.347 lbs) CO2e" over its life cycle. I did not see a definition of "life cycle."
How do we compare apples to gas cans?
George W Parker
Disclaimer
time. I do not own stock in either company. (I wish I did.) I do not
receive any remuneration in any form from either company. (Again, I
wish I did.) I do buy Exxon Mobil gasoline. I do own an old iPhone my
daughter uses as an iTouch. I need to also state that I am inherently
skeptical of any information offered by any company for public review.