Apple’s iCloud is currently being fuelled by coal, so today Greenpeace activists kicked off a campaign at stores in San Francisco and New York today asking Apple to “Clean our Cloud.” The activists released hundreds of black balloons in the stores with cartoon clouds printed on them to represent the dirty cloud. A “cloud cleaning crew” in uniform is miming cleaning up the store using white squeegees and other cleaning materials, and other activists are changing the home screens of the computers to cleanourcloud.com, all to get the message out that Apple should “Think Different” about its energy choices.
Update April 25: Protests have now happened in stores from Hong Kong to London. Follow the action live:
Apple’s cloud users want to share their music and photos with the knowledge that the cloud is being powered by renewable energy, not dirty pollution pumped out of coal-fired smokestacks. Companies like Google, Facebook and Yahoo are beginning to lead the technology sector down a clean energy pathway by prioritizing access to renewable energy when they site the data centers for their cloud, and demanding better energy options from utilities and government decision-makers.
Over 100,000 people have already signed our petition to Apple, Amazon and Microsoft to join them as clean energy leaders. Click here to be the next person to ask Apple for a clean iCloud.
I am absolutely appalled that Greenpeace activists would think that releasing hundreds of balloons in the atmosphere (in San Francisco) is a environmental statement. Balloons all over the world are released into the sky, they fall to earth, and many are in the ocean and entangled in the environment, our land and water areas. These balloons are found in some of the most remote places on earth. Environmentalists and scientists will tell you that they wish balloons did not exist. I would hope that Greenpeace would know this!!
Balloons aside…Thank all of you…All my brothers and sisters all over the world WHO CARE about the world’s environments and how we can work together to impove the planet we live on. Thank you SO much for standing on that sidewalk in front of everyone….Standing your ground, letting people know how important a clean world means to us and all the creatures large and small that share this wonderful planet.