Poll: Do You Care If Your Gadget Maker is “Green”?

Last week, I wrote about a new study from environmental advocacy group Greenpeace International, which ranked major electronics makers on their environmental friendliness. In fact, I’ve been writing about Greenpeace’s quarterly Guide to Greener Electronics for years–the group first starting releasing its Guide in 2006.

Environmental sustainability and “Going Green,” are all fine and good—I like trees just as much as the next guy–but during the years since I first started covering the subject of “Green IT,” I’ve been struck with one incontrovertible fact: Readers really don’t care about environmental sustainability. Well, most of them don’t.

This is evident from the minimal amount of comments related posts receive and the relatively low amount of page views these stories typically get. And I think I know why: Environmental sustainability and “greenliness,” if you will, aren’t sexy. And most of us value the latest and greatest tech toy over environmental friendliness, unfortunate as that may be.

Perhaps I’m wrong in this observation, but I don’t think so.

Do you care if your smartphone or tablet maker gets a poor ranking in a study like Greenpeace’s recent guide? If Apple was to get a terrible environmental friendliness rating—and it has in the past—would you stop fantasizing about that new iPhone 4S? Let me know in the poll above or drop a comment below to get more specific.

AS