This is very interesting as this was one thing Apple really used in marketing over the last few years. Here is the info I could dig up about why Apple pulled all of its 39 products out of EPEAT<\/a> (Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool).<\/p>\n – Official news article about Apple leaving from EPEAT: http:\/\/www.epeat.net\/2012\/06\/news\/apple-leaves-epeat\/<\/a><\/p>\n – The only reason given was “They said their design direction was no longer consistent with the EPEAT requirements<\/em>” -Source<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n – Here is some interesting information on the topic from WSJ:<\/p>\n “One of Apple\u2019s newest products, the MacBook Pro with a high-resolution \u201cRetina\u201d display, was nearly impossible to fully disassemble, said Kyle Wiens, co-founder of iFixit.com, a website that provides directions for users to repair their own machines. The battery was glued to the case, and the glass display was glued to its back. The product, released just a month ago, had not been submitted for EPEAT certification, according to the organization.<\/em><\/p>\n Frisbee said that the structure of that laptop would have made it ineligible for certification. \u201cIf the battery is glued to the case it means you can\u2019t recycle the case and you can\u2019t recycle the battery,\u201d Frisbee said.<\/em><\/p>\n Apple was putting design first in an effort to make products smaller and have batteries last longer, said Shaw Wu an analyst at Sterne Agee. \u201cThey are not trying to purposely make it hard to open, they are just trying to pack as much as they can into a small space\u2013it\u2019s a design decision,\u201d Wu said.<\/em><\/p>\n Many corporations like Ford, HSBC, and Kaiser Permanente require their CIOs to purchase computers from sources that are EPEAT certified, said Sarah O\u2019Brien director of outreach for EPEAT. And the U.S. government requires that 95% of the electronics it purchases be EPEAT certified.<\/em><\/p>\n In 2010, the last year the survey was conducted, 222 out of the 300 American universities with the largest endowments asked their IT departments to give preference to EPEAT certified computers. Around 70 of the schools required EPEAT certification for electronics purchases, according to O\u2019Brien.” -Source<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n