I tend to harp on the phrase "caring about God means caring about his creation" around here. I thought I would tease that out in terms of technology. For example, the new Apple laptops have arrived and Apple claims that they are the "greenest laptops ever" (video and article here). Yet some tech bloggers disagree, maintaining that the new Macbooks are just about as wasteful as any other new laptop (see article here). They claim this on the basis of the waste created in production.

I'm sure that the production waste is a good way to evaluate part of the way a laptop could be considered "green". But, I think the real questions should be: How long will it last? How much less power does it use than other laptops?

These two questions could give much more insight into how "green" a product is. If a laptop produces waste in production, but lasts for 6years on average, then it is considerably less wasteful than most. At the same time, if a laptop uses 50% of the power of other comparable machines, then it will produce much less waste over its lifetime (especially for someone who uses one as much as I do).

So I think that there should be some sort of standard for measuring the energy efficiency of these laptops, and factoring that into a "green" standard of evaluation. Perhaps this could even become a part of the energy star sticker. I'll have to recommend that one to my boy Ralph Nader.