A new era of corporate responsibility?

Tim CookFor a while now, Apple has been working to improve worker conditions, and is using more and more ‘green’ energy (they plan to eventually get 100% of their power that way).  At the recent shareholder meeting, the NCPPR challenged CEO Tim Cook on the costs of this strategy, wanting Apple to focus more on Return on Investment (ROI) and not pursue issues that don’t boost that.  Their proposal was soundly rejected by 97% of shareholders, and Cook displayed unusual emotion in his response to the spoken question at the shareholder meeting, telling the NCPPR rep, “If you want me to do things only for ROI reasons, you should get out of this stock.”  Way to go Tim!  Cook is clearly making decisions based on human ethics and morals, and it’s great to see a company as large as Apple to do this – and to be supported by its shareholders!  I hope this encourages other large corporations to take a stand against ROI and start doing what’s morally right.

Cook also gave an example of doing things for other than ROI, when he said, “When we work on making our devices accessible by the blind,” he said, “I don’t consider the bloody ROI.”

For a long time, I’d concluded that large corporations are a form of artificial intelligence…they make decisions which a single person would not normally make, and their profit-focused intelligence is again, not a very human one.  Tim Cook’s recent actions give me hope that this corporate AI may not be all-conquering, that there may still be exceptions to this.  Resisting that AI clearly requires a strong leader like Tim Cook though, and that’s the challenge for any company.

You can read more about this over at MacObserver.

Can the Internet of Things help reduce global warming?

The Internet of Things is best thought of as abundant networked, communicating smart devices all around you.  Sensors, mostly, that are all communicating and making available unprecedented amounts of information about objects and the environment.  Houses that know what rooms people are in, what rooms they are likely to be in next, and adjust HVAC systems accordingly to reduce energy consumption, for example.  I’ve loved the idea of this from a technology geek perspective, but I hadn’t considered the environmental aspect until coming across this article talking about how it could offset billions of tons of CO2 through increased efficiency.  Interesting idea…and it makes a lot of sense.  We’d have to also consider the CO2 impact of actually producing so many sensors and networked objects, though.

Eco Market

Eco Market is a neat ecommerce site that features small sellers selling eco-friendly stuff.  It’s a bit UK-centric, so you do have to be conscious of the environmental impact of shipping small packages halfway around the world, but I found that when you dig into some categories, there are search boxes at the top that let you select options such as ‘ships from’, to at least have some influence over that factor.  If you have an eco-friendly product you’re trying to sell, it might be worth checking out this site!

(via Treehugger)

Review: Tenergy 9V battery charger

Tenergy 9V battery charger
Tenergy 9V battery charger

In my quest to live a more sustainable life,  I’ve transitioned to rechargeable batteries wherever possible (read more here), and have finally tackled the remaining piece of that puzzle – rechargeable 9V batteries.  I found these to be surprisingly rare, and settled on one of the few options from Amazon, the charger and batteries from Tenergy.

I suppose there’s not much to say about the batteries…and that’s a good thing!  As for the charger, well, it works and charges the batteries, but I was disappointed by the quality.  Tenergy used cheap white plastic that lets a lot of the light through, giving this charger a pink glow when charging (as the attached photo shows).  It doesn’t cost much more to use a more opaque plastic in manufacturing, yet this is something companies need to really fight for when dealing with Chinese manufacturing, at least from my experience.  You can spec out an awesome Lexan from Sabic (formerly GE) that will block like like this, but the factories will want to substitute a cheaper, more readily available one….which I suspect is what happened here.  It doesn’t affect the charger performance so it’s not really a big deal, it’s more of an annoyance of mine to see products built less than optimally.

If you’re looking for something like this, you can find the charger here at Amazon, and a 10-pack of the batteries here.  Don’t think you need a 10-pack?  Take a walk around your house and count the number of smoke detectors you have (should be one per bedroom plus in the common areas of the house), and the CO detectors.  You might be surprised at just how many 9V batteries you need!

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