Last week marked my first ever lobbying experience. I had been eagerly awaiting this day since I attended the lobbying training in February this year. I received an email about this opportunity with only very vague descriptions of the event but of course this made me very curious and I was keen to take part.
The “How Clean Is Your Cloud” report was published only the week before, and as a huge Apple fan (what did we do before iPhones?) I had my fingers crossed that the lobbying activity would be connected to this campaign. And sure enough, when I showed up at head office for an early briefing (7.45 am!), I was very excited to find out that all the volunteer lobbyists had appointments at the Genius Bar in Apple’s flagship store on Regent Street that day!
We were all equipped with Apple gadgets and set off to Oxford Circus braving the relentless rain and wind. Slightly soaked, we arrived in a lovely café just around the corner from the Apple store where we had breakfast and waited for our turn to hit the Genius Bar.
As this was my first ever real life lobbying encounter I was slightly nervous as I waited in the shiny shop surrounded by all the beautiful gadgets. In order to calm my nerves I reminded myself that I actually am a real Apple customer and that I am indeed concerned about the environment, so by the time I was approached by Diego, my ‘Genius’, I felt confident to deliver my concerns as a customer.
I told Diego that I read an alarming report last week, which stated that Apple’s data centres get 51 % of their power from coal and that as an environmentally conscientious customer I would like to know what Apple are going to do about this. Diego was very knowledgeable and told me about the solar panels Apple are installing in one of their US sites (which, sadly, will only cover 10% of the energy demand) and that Apple don’t publish any numbers because they don’t want to commit to any promises which they can’t keep. I was very disappointed by this lack of long term commitment by such an innovative and creative company as Apple. I think they should follow in the steps of other IT giants like Google, Yahoo and Facebook and become an advocate of renewable energy!
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