TOSSING THE POD

Of course, there's no real excuse for Apple's lack of forward planning about what will happen to iPods when they move beyond their useful life, and the Green Guide campaign to get Apple to adapt the design to make it greener is welcome, and we hope Apple respond.

On the other hand, are iPods quite the environmental disaster suggested? Compared with the piles of plastic, tonnes of material, wasted products and other petrochemicals and various resources consumed by the production of physical CDs, surely the iPod (and other electronic music devices) are much, much more ecologically friendly? Sure, there's much more to be done, but it's a massive step in the right direction. And whatever happened to all those cassette tapes, eh?

music environment ipod waste