Dell Blasts Apple’s Green Claims, but Does Dell have a Leg to Stand On?

Apple’s television advertisement claims its family of notebooks are the world’s greenest.

Some people at Dell, the self-proclaimed greenest technology company, take exception to this. Bob Pearson, Dell VP of Communities and Conversations, took Apple to task in a blog post. Pearson says Apple is not being open and transparent on environmental issues and putting out advertisements that may not be truthful.

Dell may be casting stones from within a glass house, according to this article from The Wall Street Journal. Despite improving its energy efficiency, skeptics say its claims of carbon neutrality are premature since there is no set standard for carbon neutrality.

A major factor in Dell’s carbon neutrality claims is its purchase of carbon credits, which offset a portion of its carbon footprint by bankrolling the environmental improvements of others. However, there is reason to believe such improvements would have been made regardless of whether carbon credits were purchased. While some projects, such as a threatened forest in Madagascar, were dependent on Dell investment, others, such as a wind turbine at the University of Minnesota, were not.