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Carbon Neutral

1887 points posted to Environment, Sales Strategies by smotchberry 02/17/07 **IMPLEMENTED**

Dell should adopt a Carbon Neutral program for its products or at least make it an option for consumers in their ordering process. People seem to have the impression that Apple is doing a lot for the environment, when the reality is - Dell's doing more and can do even more!
Check out the Idea in Action on Dell's goal for carbon neutrality.




hawk
02/25/07		 "Carbon Neutral" is a misnomer and, in my opinion, on the verge of false marketing. As long as we use energy produced from fossil fuels, the only way to build stuff in a "carbon neutral" way is to put carbon back into the ground. Maybe we will do that eventually (by pumping CO2 back into the oil-fields), but this is experimental and hardly what ecology-minded people meant.

Remember: it would be carbon-neutral to take down the entire rain forest, provided we did not let the wood escape to the atmosphere by burning it (but, say, dumped it at the bottom of the Atlantic).

Of course you may be able to guarantee that all products were build using nuclear power, but I doubt that would have positive marketing value here in Europe :-)
spacecitygirl
03/08/07		 Dell is promoting their Plant a Tree for Me program, that helps promote being carbon neutral.
http://www.dell.com/content/topics/global.aspx/corp/environment/en/tree?c=us&...
phubert
03/08/07		 So, now we have environmentalist 'fanboys' at the site... I can't think of a bigger NON-issue when it comes to Dell's performance for its customers.
thekingrich
03/13/07		 Carbon Neutral? Is this more Environmental Mumbo Jumbo?
Surely you jest! The entire "carbon credits" farse has been exposed for the fraud that it is!
I hope Dell does NO such thing!
steve2
03/24/07		 Nobody seems to have the impression that Apple is doing a lot for the environment. They have gotten very negative press.
"Carbon neutral" if you take the word by what it means, is not possible with electronics. The production of a computer makes more co2 than the production of a car. Nevertheless, there surely are lots of areas with room for improvement. But a lot of this is on consumer side (for example most buy faster cpus and above all far stronger graphics processors, than they actually need). On the other hand, if some component has a smaller environmental footprint than comparable competitors and can prove it, that does draw customers. I think most of it will come from leaving out things (or making them optional), that the typical customer doesn't use.
pixar
04/20/07		 Carbon Neutral will look very stupid in a couple of years when the tide is turning and we get ICE AGE warnings again....

But hey, I'm sure it makes some people happy. Does it matter or does it help? No.
thekingrich
04/21/07		 Why don't we just do like the Chinese?
They are NOT in the Kyoto treaty, so what they do is they build Coal Power Plants and say they are going to turn them on. Some European company/country buys the power plant, destroys the plant, and absorbs the Carbon Credits... Now they can pollute more in Europe, since they destroyed the filthy power plant in China. China laughs, and builds another plant right next to the old one... HA HA!! China is Exempt! The Kyoto treaty is defunkt! HA HA HA... I couldn't stop laughing when I read it in the WSJ.
akhale
05/02/07		 Dell already has a GREEN program in place that is being developed... in the meantime if that isn't good enough for you, go to Al Gore's website and buy one of those bogus carbon offsets.
mauricio_martins
05/03/07		 The movement for Carbon Free is running around the world... I was talking with some guys from some Non Governamental Organisations (NGO's) that are promoting carbon free campaigns and 1 thing comes to my mind. How stop the carbon comsumption or generation of lots of tons of CO2? It's a utopia. The human race evolved burning things. Even those communities that avoid anything industrialized. They use something that fire has burned and generated tons of CO2...

The best campaingn is promote the Carbon Compensation. Trees must be planted in areas devasted by us. Houses must own a little garden and every human being should plant at least 3 trees during his life (and keep them growing forever). Promote usage of renewal energy sources - Atomic/Nuclear, Hydro energetics, Tide, solar... About solar, how about getting heat and some electricity from the sun? It's cheaper and there's no taxes related to it... or the government is crazy enough to create a tax regarding Usage of Sun Radiation?(If they do, call them Vampires - they don't like the sun!)

Closing my thougts: Great/Grand/Big companies should support the Carbon Compensation program. Hopefully this will dim the demand of energy generated by any kind of power plants. Carbon Free is utopia...
thekingrich
05/04/07		 "Trees must be planted in areas devastated by us"
What are you talking about? The massive de-forestation of CHINA (A COMMUNIST Country, mind you), or the USA where we have MORE trees today than we did when we started this nation?
Did you forget that the top 5 CO2 polluters are MOTHER NATURE herself?
The DOT of CO2 that humans produce doesn't even properly measure comparatively.
bryant_h
09/27/07		 I work on Dell's environmental initiatives, and wanted to let you all know about our announcement this week that Dell plans to be the first major computer company to neutralize the carbon impact of its worldwide operations.
See the Ideas in Action page for more info, or read the blog post on Direct2Dell.
@smotchberry - thanks for your idea!

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