More than two years ago I blogged about Apple Computer’s run in with Greenpeace and I continue to use it as a case study of the risks of being targeted by a pressure group. Well Apple have released a new site which makes the environmental impact of their products as transparent as possible.

As someone who is typing this on his sixth Mac in 20 years, I really chuffed that such a high profile company has realised that in the 21st century, hip = green and vice versa. Interesting too that my 2008 model Powerbook Pro has 60% of the carbon emissions in use as my old laptop.

This energy efficiency has wider importance too as the world becomes increasingly digitised. There is an interesting article in the latest edition of The ENDS Report on the carbon footprint of data centres. Incredibly the typical server only uses 10-20% of its capacity. A technique called ‘virtualisation’ is now being used to increase this to 50-70% – a massive improvement.

There are many benefits of the shift to a digital world – removing the information (photos, music, movies) from the medium (film, paper, CDs, DVDs plus associated packaging and distribution) – and it is great to see that the carbon footprint of each unit of digital activity is dropping so rapidly so we don’t simply move the problem around.