Is strategic design sustainable?

This may sound surprising to many who have seen Apple's less than stellar score from Greenpeace's Guide to Greener Electronics. The problem with this study is that it relies, mostly, on statements made by companies about their environmental initiatives, not their actual actions--especially not considering their product and service strategies. So, if a company talks a lot about their environmental efforts (something Apple has been loathe to do for years) in their annual reports or website, they almost always score higher. Companies, like Apple, who excel and even lead their industries in the initiatives they put into practice in the products and services the offer--the actual impact they make in the marketplace--often don't score as highly. This is unfortunate.

Consider Apple's product line. None of its competitors do more than Apple to dematerialize the energy and materials embodied in its products (this is one of the most important strategies for product companies and one which has the biggest impact on the environment). There are no extraneous materials in its products, which is part of its strategy to also make its products as small as possible and inexpensive to produce as possible. Part of its dematerialization strategy is to eliminate toxic materials and, now, plastics. In the past year, Apple has eliminated most of the plastic in its products in favor of aluminum. While aluminum has a higher "embodied energy" than plastic, it is eminently more recyclable (which the plastic is, realistically, not). On top of this, Apple's iPod and iPhone are dematerializing other products (such as watches, slide projectors, external hard drives, thumb drives, etc.) by offering the same functionality within the same product. This further compounds the benefits that Apple's products offer. (To be fair, many other manufacturers' products do some of the same. Consider how many people no longer buy or wear watches no that they carry a mobile phone with them at all times).

In addition, its success bring the music and video download model to the mainstream, is further reducing the energy and material represented by the CDs, DVDs, and other media that isn't produced and transported around the world in order to get songs and video onto computers and iPods. While Apple wasn't the first to offer media downloads, until they offered a workable, end-to-end solution for people other than geeks and experts, the download market was insignificant.

Lastly, after years of trying to get the software publishers to reduce the ridiculously wasteful packaging for software, it has been Apple who has succeeded in actually forcing this change by, first, changing its own software boxes and the packaging for its physic products (which are a miracle of engineering in their own right) and then, second, influencing game and software publishers to reduce their packaging for sale on the shelves in Apple's retail stores. Like pop star Sting accomplished back in the 1980s with CD packaging (he vowed that his first solo CD release would jettison the wasteful, needless, oversized cardboard box, much to the naysaying of everyone in the music industry), Apple has succeeded in pushing the software and gaming industries to reduce the needless waste in their own products. No had been successful before this in making lasting change in packaging.

These material and dematerialization strategies, along with its take-back program (a long awaited offering that trailed significantly behind HP and a few other competitors), probably has more impact on actual environmental impact that most of the other initiatives in Greenpeace's survey combined.

This isn't to say that Apple's perfect. But, if you want a very visible, approachable example that you can see all around you of exemplary sustainable design, they really can't be beat--at least in their industry.