Tomas Chlebek Apple's latest step toward greater environmental responsibility continues to eliminate difficult-to-biodegrade plastics from product packaging. Starting April 15, Apple Store customers will take their new devices in paper bags.
Information about the change in bag material was sent to Apple Store employees in an email. It says:
"We want to leave the world better than we found it. Bag after bag. So on April 15, we will switch to paper shopping bags made from 80 percent recycled materials. These bags will be available in medium and large sizes.
When customers buy a product, ask if they need a bag. He might think not. You will encourage them to be even more environmentally friendly.
If you still have plastic bags in stock, use them up before switching to new, paper bags."
It's not yet clear what the new paper bags will look like, but they probably won't be too different from the, also paper, bags in which the Apple Watch was sold.
Millions of products are sold directly in Apple Stores every year, which means that even the production of ordinary bags has a big impact on the environment. Apple took the last big step towards a more ecological distribution of its products a year ago, when he invested in long-term sustainable forests producing wood for the production of packaging.
She described aspects of the company's functioning and the life of its products on March product presentation Lisa Jackson, Apple's head of environmental and political and social affairs.
I read somewhere that plastic bags are more environmentally friendly than paper ones.
The production of a paper bag is more expensive, and much more water is used in its production than in the production of a plastic bag.
Paper ones are much heavier and take up more space. This means a lot more transport costs and at the same time it means more waste to recycle, which in turn means more energy used for recycling than is used for plastic bags.
So Apple pretends to be green, but in this case it is not.
The "Apple bags" that I got in the past in the US at the Apple store were relatively high-quality and more massive, i.e. more plastic with probably more demanding production, etc. That's why I wouldn't completely rule out the environmental friendliness of paper ones, with the better designs it's probably shifting a bit, here it was not a "hypermarket plastic bag" made of minimal material.
Otherwise, of course, it's always a bit of a drama, but it probably won't get worse, rather the benefit will be a little lower than it seems.