Dell Inc. has found itself in the spotlight over the past couple of weeks after taking on Apple’s claims of producing the greenest generation of MacBooks ever.
Dell fired a shot across Apple’s bow on Dec. 19 with a blog from corporate VP Bob Pearson called The Real Meaning of Being Green. In it, Pearson said among other things that Apple should focus on action, not ads, and cited Dell’s commitment to carbon neutrality, indicating that Dell had reached carbon neutrality in August 2008.
It didn’t take long for the Wall Street Journal to pick up on the story, raising questions about Dell’s claim in its article, Green Goal of Carbon Neutrality Hits Limits. The Journal noted that there is no generally accepted definition of carbon neutrality. Dell defined it to mean that it was neutral in terms of its boilers and company-owned cars, its buildings’ electricity use, and its employees’ company-owned cars. It didn’t factor in such carbon issues as supplier performance, the emissions created to ship parts to Dell or the coal-fired electricity used to run Dell computers worldwide.
Honestly, anything Dell does to make the world a little better ought to be applauded, as should anything Apple does. And certainly Dell has a right to express its opinions about how the industry as a whole should approach its environmental responsibilities. Pearson was well within his rights to encourage Apple to be a bigger part of the conversation and to set stretch goals for environmental performance.
The environmental conversation can backfire, however, when companies start bickering over who’s greener. Then people get the impression that “responsibility” and “citizenship” are being used as shortcuts to grab a little more market share. Certainly it’s legitimate to discuss the environmental advantages of one product over another or one approach over another. But if it’s not handled well, with a good, long-term strategy beyond selling a few more units, companies are once again opening themselves to inspection, criticism and renewed charges of greenwashing.
In our house, we have both a Dell unit and an Apple unit. We’ve felt good about the performance of both and about the efforts of both companies to be responsible and responsive to society. This kind of squabbling, though, is leaving a bad taste.
