Last year, a nonprofit environmental organization called Climate Counts started to put together, with the help of officially released information, the so-called Climate Counts Company Scorecard, in which the 60 top consumer companies are arranged in a chart according to their environmental efforts.

In 2008, in the second edition of the ranking, Apple was placed last in the electronics industry market, having gathered only 11 points out of 100. The company’s lack of transparency regarding the efforts to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions and, in fact, the failure to issue a climate change-related public policy have lead to this very low score.

"Business is being pushed by consumers to do its part to solve the climate crisis," Gary Hirshberg, chairman of ClimateCounts said. "The Scorecard allows consumers to make good climate decisions in their everyday purchases, and it's having an impact." Gary Hirshberg is also CEO of organic yogurt maker Stonyfield Farm, the company which finances the campaign of Climate Counts.

This is not the first time Apple experiences environment oriented problems; last year in October, Apple was criticized by Greenpeace for not taking action with regard to phasing out hazardous chemicals that are being used in the iPhone. According to Greenpeace, the phone contains chlorinated plastic polyvinyl chloride and "brominated flame retardants" that can be quite harmful once released in the environment.

However, things seem to be on the right track, as Apple has recently added an environment section on its website, in which several important aspects are addressed.