Got a spare buck? Literally… just one dollar. Want to use your iPhone 4 guilt free? Why don’t you give it to The Nature Conservancy, and they’ll use it to offset the lifetime CO2 emissions of your iPhone 4? That’s a penny for each pound of carbon!
The donation drive is being headed by Philanthroper, a daily deals site (and friend to Cult of Mac) with a difference: they highlight a single charity every day and encourage people to donate just one dollar to it, with the philosophy that people are more likely to give a buck a day to a bunch of charities than a few hundred a year to one charity.
They do great work, and it couldn’t be easier to send a buck: all you need is a PayPal account. You can even deduct your donation from your taxes!
Seriously, if you’ve got an iPhone 4 and are even half-serious about the environment, this is a dollar well spent. You can’t put a price on the piece of mind that sustainable responsibility can bring.
John Brownlee is a writer for Fast Company, and a contributing writer here at CoM. He has also written for Wired, Playboy, Boing Boing, Popular Mechanics, VentureBeat, and Gizmodo. He lives in Boston with his wife and two parakeets. You can follow him here on Twitter.
66 responses to “Donate Just $1 To Pay For The Lifetime CO2 Emissions Of Your iPhone”
Wow, Giving a buck or paying for “carbon emissions” does nothing but put money into the pockets of crooks. Stepping back, charities are great, but giving a buck for CO2 emissions…don’t insult me, just ask for a buck for charity and i’ll give it. Same goes for carbon credits. Its pointless to give money to the government for things like that. First of all they cannot do anything about it, its in the air and you giving them a buck does nothing about that (If it is even bad in the first place). Secondly the government would just blow it anyways, govt. is not an efficient way to discover alt. fuels, and they do not spend efficiently.
I already use my iPhone 4 guilt-free by understanding that carbon credits are a total scam.
$1 for a carbon offset for a phone?
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA.
Yeah, I’ll get right on that once the guys behind it buy some carbon offsets for the BS they’re shoveling!
People who believe in this ‘carbon credit’ silliness need to check out news sources other than CNN and NYTimes. For instance: http://www.wnd.com/?pageId=404… and http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18… andhttp://www.msnbc.msn.com/id… Put down the ‘global warming’ kool-aid and go back to writing about what we come here for: Interesting and useful Apple-related stuff!
sorry, typo on the last link: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18…
Tell you what I’m going to do. I’m going to build a big machine to capture and trap CO2 from the air. Then I’m going to start charging people a “breathing tax” to offset the CO2 they release every time they exhale.
Has this actually been measured by ANSI approved scientific devices? Come on, I can accurately measure the pulse width of a radar and its PRF with scientific devices. I can accurately relay this information. What about the carbon offset of a phone?
Is it April 1st already?
Or have the company that makes the iPhone add that buck into the price of the phone and that way they can send a single large payment to whatever group is trying to save the environment. But let everyone know that when they buy the iPhone they are paying that extra buck. Then they can choose whether or not to pad Apples pockets with more money.
Seriously, I’m all for meaningful ways to make our environment healthier, but I’m not for plans that throw tons of money at a problem that may need gigatons of money to make any kind of impact. I mean, when is the last time 1 million dollars or even 1 billion dollars would have had any effect on a volcano erupting (which emits lots more gases than I do)?
But do I feel guilty if I don’t give a dollar? No.
What bullshit, get a good writer.
What a bunch of garbage. Apple makes some of the most environmentally friendly products period… I fell NO guilt in using my Apple products…
Sense when are there CO2 in phones. Especially the iPhone.
from charging it, stupid
Always read the comments on this website but can’t believe the extent that some of these charlatans will go to to relieve you of your money. Have a look at this very good program on UK’s Channel 4, “The Great Global Warming Swindle” then tell me your opinion.
http://video.google.com/videop…
I promise to offset anyones iPhone’s carbon Footprint that has guilt about it. Send me 1 dollar and I promise I’ll turn off one light in my house for 12 hours a day. Now, feel better?
P.T. Barnum was right!
I wont give them a $1 but if anybody thinks that global warming is not happening, they’ve been living under a rock of ignorance.
TOTAL WASTE OF MONEY for a hoax. If it’s not the “Shit different” article that is dragging the quality of Cult Of Mac down, it’s this! Stupid idiotic crap like this makes me want to turn my A/C down to 68, and buy a gas guzzling car just to piss off the losers who believe in global warming.
Carbon Credits? Give me a break.. Modern day scam for idoits
Want to make a real difference? Don’t have kids or only have one…
Sheldon
Put it this way, Global warming & cooling have been happening for many millennia. Long before mankind made a footprint on this earth. Think of it in a simplistic term of seasons of the earth vs. seasons as we know the which are yearly. Should we ban fall because a lot of plant life die? Do we have the capability of carrying this out? Will we, as tiny contributors on this earth, make a difference? I know one can argue that we should always be better off safer than sorry but at what cost to our economy & lives.
Get a new job John, you’ve obviously out lived this one. Al Gore might have a few openings in his bag of crap.
Hahaha…Yeeeep. You’re right, Howie.
Modern day indulgences… I think not.
Yes, there are plenty of problems with how some carbon credit operations work? Do you think the Nature Conservancy’s offsets share these problems? Do you have evidence to that effect? This isn’t just some rogue group with no conservation experience you know.
So the Nature Conservancy are crooks? You know they’re not the government right?
Not exactly an uncontroversial, scientifically rigorous source on the debate that one.
also from making it, stupid. you think it’s all solar powered factories and buildings with workers driving in cars powered by happiness?
Cult of Mac should send us all a dollar to cover their bull$hit emissions.
While you may believe the documentary may be controversial, it can be argued the leaked e-mails from the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit is much more controversial & damning to the conspiracy of Climate Change. A few years ago, e-mails from the CRU were shown that a number of top scientists & organizations conspired to keep the myth of global warming alive despite recent years of cooling temperatures.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/com…
Except that the UK House of Commons Science and Technology Committee, and independent Science Assessment Panel, and both Penn St. and U of East Anglia investigations cleared the scientists of scientific malpractice and dismissed the idea that the emails undermined the scientific consensus on climate change.
My point wasn’t that controversy is bad, it’s that TGGWS programme you linked to is wrong on the science. The U. East Anglia email controversy didn’t change that.
That’s the end of my part of a climate change debate on an Apple fan website though.
Agreed, the debate on this isn’t relevant on an Apple web site. Good to hear your views though. Cheers.
I don’t think that they are “crooks” but I also think that carbon credits is just another scheme to get donations. If you want to save the environment then pick one that, say, saves the rain forest through direct donations. Trying to shame someone for their use of technology is shameful in itself.
Man has an impact on the environment but adding a trace gas to the air at .04% is the least of our impact. If you hate burning coal, hate it for the right reasons and that would be the coal slurry waste that is just piling up, contamination of water, radiation release from burning coal (3x greater then from a nuke plant), mercury, mountain top removal and strip mining, etc.
Same thing with your technology. To produce the rare earth elements, most are retrieved from open pit mines, uses lots of water, etc and even Apple products are made with labor that boarders sweat shop conditions.
Think I will save my $1 for some other causes that will have a real impact.