Greenpeace praises Apple and others for helping build a greener Internet

greenpeace blimp

Apple has quite the history with environmental organization Greenpeace. The outfit has panned the iPad maker several times over the years for using toxic chemicals in its products and other non-green practices—it even staged a protest outside of its Cupertino headquarters back in 2012.

A lot has changed over the years, however, and this week, instead of protesting Apple, Greenpeace took to the skies to praise it and other companies for helping build ‘a greener Internet.’ That image you see above is of a blimp that the environmental advocacy group flew over Silicon Valley…

The stunt followed the release of Greenpeace’s ‘Clicking Clean’ report earlier this week, which referred to Apple, Google and Facebook as “green energy innovators.” Others tech companies however, like Amazon, eBay and HP, didn’t fare so well, each scoring less than 20% in Clean Energy Index.

clean energy index

Here’s more from the report on Apple’s perfect 100% CEI score:

Apple’s aggressive pursuit of its commitment to power the iCloud with 100% renewable energy has given the company the inside track among the IT sector’s leaders in building a green Internet. Apple has made good on its pledge by building the largest privately owned solar farms at its North Carolina data center, working with its utility in Nevada to power its upcoming data center there with solar and geothermal energy, and purchasing wind energy for its Oregon and California data centers. Apple’s commitment to renewable energy has helped set a new bar for the industry, illustrating in very concrete terms that a 100% renewable internet is within its reach, and providing several models of intervention for other companies that want to build a sustainable Internet. 

Apple has taken a number of steps over the year to decrease its carbon footprint, including pledging to run all of its data centers on 100% renewable energy and hiring Lisa P. Jackson, the former Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency to oversee all of its environmental projects.

Additionally, the company has said that 70% of its new 3 million+ square foot ‘iSpaceship’ campus it’s currently building will run on solar and fuel cell energy.