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Comment by fredwu | Hacker News Reader

In metric countries (like Australia) Apple does publish the numbers in kg: https://www.apple.com/au/environment/resources/ :)

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But they've clearly been converted to pounds, then back to kilograms.

  Lead 19,994
  Tin 1,999
  Silver 2,999
  Gold 1,000

Interesting. For the UK they just say 1 tonne, 2 tonnes, etc - https://www.apple.com/uk/environment/resources/

So everyone’s trying to play this as some conspiracy of fictional numbers. All we’ve actually found is that Apple do localize their site, and possibly some weaknesses in how they do so.

Clearly this is evidence that their environmental report was created in their Irish subsidiary (of Double Irish fame), propagated to the U.S., and then modified for the rest of the world (here, Australia).

Megagrams would sound cooler though :)

Which is kinda interesting in itself.

Evidently so. This is the highest-rated comment I've ever written here.

As an American, I feel it's a little bit condescending for them to assume we can't consume the numbers in metric units. I also kind of wonder how much gold they actually recovered. Marketing logic says they rounded up, but what if they only recovered, say, ten bushels worth, do they still round up to a tonne?

It may be condescending, but I would be astounded if the majority of Americans could estimate the value of 1000kg in lbs within an order of magnitude.

"About the same as a normal ton" is well within an order of magnitude. Besides, we're not talking about average Americans, we're talking about the subset who would bother to read about how much zinc Apple recycled last year.

Again, I would be surprised if the majority of Americans would come up with "about the same as a normal ton" - I suspect the majority of Americans wouldn't know that there is such thing as a metric ton, much less how it relates to kilograms. It's really an alien way of thinking for anyone outside of mildly-technical professions/hobbies.

Based on your comment 'as an American', I was responding with my perspective on the entire class of people, not a subset.

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