Never get an iPod engraved. Or at least, never get one engraved by Apple. We recently ordered an iPod as a gift and to make it more personal we requested a simple message be engraved on the back. Little did we know how making that innocent request would mean our high tech toy was going to lead to tons of extra CO2 being poured out into the atmosphere.

Where Does an IPod Travel When You Order One Customized With a Message?

Given the high-tech layout of Apple stores, you’d sort of expect they could engrave the backs of devices right on the premises. But failing that, you’d think they could do it at a central warehouse or shipping depot.

Nope. They do it, or at least they did ours, back in the source country.

Do Apple Products Ship Straight from the Country of Manufacture to the Nearest Large Canadian City?

I’d also have thought that if our purchase was going to arrive from the Far East, it would come straight into Toronto (or Vancouver or Montreal) and then travel the rest of the way to us fairly quickly. Wrong again!

Here’s the actual route our purchase has taken so far

(Note: there’s a time zone between Shanghai and Anchorage which is how it arrived before it departed.)

Think of how many planes that is. Even assuming it never gets taken off the plane and just stays aboard while they re-fuel, that’s an awesome waste of fuel. And I bet it was actually transported off the plane several times on that route.

What an incredible amount of wasted CO2 and it’s not even here yet.

Why Is This C02 Wastage “Financially” Important?

Well, anything that causes pollution is going to cost us in the long run. Whether you believe it causes global climate change or not, you can be sure that we can’t create more of anything than a non-technological creature would create, without it having some type of impact.

It could also serve as a good reminder of which transportation industries or shipping industries to invest in, or to not invest in, depending on your viewpoint. Personally, I think it shows that Apple’s preferred courier could come up with some significant cost savings if it wanted to. There must be enough business to ship from Suzhou straight to Toronto (or at least Vancouver), somehow.

Next time, we’ll skip the engraving and just write something on with a Sharpie!

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Have you ever accidentally contributed a whole whack of C02 to our environment? What would you avoid doing in future? Please share your experience with a comment.