Dell Carbon Neutral claims exaggerated
Comment | Print | Email to a Friend | Font Size: AAIf you are a regular watcher of the TV Show Dirty Jobs with Mike Rowe you know that not everyone agrees with the new "Green" movement. Many companies and Celebrities wave the green flag and talk about protecting the environment. But are they really doing anything about it? Or is it all just talk.
Amongst the Green talking companies we have Apple, they even went so far as to claim their latest line of MacBooks was the "Greenest Ever". Problem is they are not that green at all. They still contain Chips with High Lead in them and still put off carbon monoxide like everyone else. Green Peace pointed this out to us and Apple eventually pulled the ads.
The latest company to be caught lying about being green is Dell. Dell has made claims that it was a Neutral Carbon foot print. However, the Wall Street Journal points out that they are making that claim while omitting a great deal of information. Dell is only including the carbon emissions produced by its boilers and company-owned cars, its buildings' electricity use, and its employees' business air travel. But not any of the oil used to make its parts or the fuels used to ship them etc.
Read more at The Wall Street Journal.
The term may suggest a company has reengineered itself so that it's no longer adding to the carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases scientists say are contributing to climate change. The experience of Dell, one of the few multinational corporations to claim it already has achieved carbon neutrality, shows the reality often falls short of that ideal.
The amount of emissions Dell has committed to neutralize is known in the environmental industry as the company's "carbon footprint." But there is no universally accepted standard for what a footprint should include, and so every company calculates its differently. Dell counts the emissions produced by its boilers and company-owned cars, its buildings' electricity use, and its employees' business air travel.
In fact, that's only a small fraction of all the emissions associated with Dell. The footprint doesn't include the oil used by Dell's suppliers to make its computer parts, the diesel and jet fuel used to ship those computers around the world, or the coal-fired electricity used to run them.
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