Some people claim that companies are designing products that require the consumer to pollute.

Apple manufactures a number of products. Their latest products include the iPhone and the iPad. These are great pieces of equipment that have revolutionized the communication and entertainment markets. The company has always been known as a company that did not want to allow third party penetration to their products. In other words, they do their best to assure that the consumer can only buy peripheral products from Apple.

Their latest products have grabbed the attention of the entire world, and made the company huge sums of money. Great job. Consider that if the battery wears out, the consumer has to return the product to the company for repair. The simple process of changing batteries is not supposed to be allowed. Having said that, some enterprising people have developed products to allow the consumer to change their own battery. Of course, Apple will never service the product again.

Now, I am pretty sure the company decided that most consumers are ready to move on after two years anyway. The price to replace the battery will certainly contribute to that decision. According to an interview on Leo LaPort's Internet TWIT network show, the iPhone and iPad cause recyclers problems to process because they are glued together and difficult to dismantle. The lithium ion batteries could even cause disastrous problems in a shredder.

This caused me to want to learn more about this ubiquitous product. Is it really destroying our landfills?

My conclusion is that the Apple products are not causing environmental problems. While some recyclers may have a problem, there are plenty of ways to properly dispose of the equipment. Most recyclers and Apple will offer something back for products submitted for recycle. Just type iPhone and recycle into a search engine and there are plenty of places. Most electronic stores will have a recycle bin. Just make sure to remove any personal information from the phone first.

According to the Apple website, the company is achieving about 70 percent recycle of their products. I disagree with their calculation method as they are using a seven-year product life cycle. That is a number that is commonly used by business to calculate the life cycle of computer equipment. I am not so sure it fits iPhones or iPads life cycles. Their numbers are still impressive.

This was a good lesson for me. I listened to a trusted source and believed the worst-case description of a company. But, as I delved into the story further, I found it to not be true. Understand that this is not a company whose products I buy. I find their attempts to design products to eliminate any competition to be off putting. However, I also must acknowledge information that I find to be incorrect. To be fair to Mr. LaPort, he was interviewing someone in his studio and had no choice but to accept the information he was told at face value, so Leo was mislead as well. Having listened to his shows for many years, I am sure he would have corrected the information later. On the other hand, he has mentioned a number of times his feud with Apple so maybe not.