Apple Corporation
Company Compliance Plan-APPLE
The Apple Corporation: Compliance plan
The Apple Corporation has recently been beset by a series of scandals, regarding the discrepancy between how it manufactures its products and the ethics it claims to uphold in its compliance plan. On its website, the Apple Corporation has tried to inform and persuade the public that it is compliant with the standards it sets in its company compliance plan. For example, regarding recycling, it states that "Apple started recycling in 1994 and today we operate recycling programs in countries where more than 82% of all Macs and iPods are sold. By the end of this year, that figure will increase to 93%" (Apple: A Greener Apple, 2012, Apple.). Apple has also been more aggressive than its competitors in removing questionable toxins from its products. "It now makes iPods and iPhones free of polyvinyl chlorides and brominated flame retardant" (Charny 2008).
The minimalist design of Apple products, the company contends, ultimately results in less waste. "Over the past decade, Apple's designers and engineers have pioneered the development of smaller, thinner, and lighter...
As our products become more powerful, they require less material to produce and generate fewer carbon emissions" (The story behind Apple's environmental footprint, 2012, Apple). According to the EPA, eight of Apple's nine MacBooks meet the EPA gold standard of environmental soundness while Dell and Hewlett-Packard have lower rankings for optimal soundness measures (Charny 2008).
Another criticism of Apple's ethics revolves around how workers are treated at the factories where its products are manufactured. According to Apple's Code of Conduct, even when local standards allow for low wages to be paid to workers and for substandard treatment, Apple mandates that human rights are upheld. "Apple Inc.'s latest Supplier Responsibility report indicates the company has stepped up its audits and training at a number of locations around the world. The report says the company conducted on-site audits at 102 facilities in 2009, up from 83 in 2008, and trained 133,000 workers, supervisors and managers, a sharp increase from 27,000 a year earlier" (Hyatt 2010). Apple admits that not all of its suppliers adhere to ethical guidelines: Apple audits found 55 facilities that…
