Apple recently asked EPEAT, a national registry of environmentally sound desktops, notebooks, and displays, to remove 39 of its products from the group's list. EPEAT is one of the largest eco-friendly certifying agencies in the country, funded by the EPA and a coalition of manufacturers, including Apple.

Certain schools, government agencies, and businesses require their IT departments to buy EPEAT-certified products, so Apple's move could eliminate them as an option for many institutions.

But Apple, a company that has made a big deal in public about being environmentally conscious—from getting rid of certain toxic chemicals in its components to building data centers that run on renewable energy—will not seek the stamp of approval carried by over 2,000 other devices sold in the United States. To earn EPEAT (short for Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool) certification, "recyclers need to be able to easily disassemble products, with common tools, to separate toxic components, like batteries," the Wall Street Journal's Joel Schectman reports.

That restriction could be the reason Apple is stepping back from EPEAT. As Ars reported in June, the new Retina MacBook Pro shaves millimeters off Apple's previous notebook's size, but it can be difficult, if not impossible, to take apart. "The battery is glued in and pretty much non-serviceable by users, so don't count on saving some money by doing it yourself," Chris Foresman wrote. The LCD on the retina is glued into the notebook, and similarly difficult to remove.

But Apple is removing all of its products from EPEAT's registry, even older desktops that had once been certified. Indeed, the new, non-retina MacBook Pro fared well in iFixit's reparability rating (which would comply with EPEAT's "easy-to-disassemble" rule). "Apple uses regular (non-proprietary) screws in the non-retina MacBook Pro," Jacqui Cheng wrote, and, "while the non-retina MacBook Pro's LCD would still cost a pretty penny to replace, the LCD is at least removable and users who have cracked their displays won't have to replace the entire assembly. This is not the case with the retina version."

Still, "[Apple] said their design direction was no longer consistent with the EPEAT requirements," Robert Frisbee, CEO of EPEAT, told the Journal. "They were important supporters and we are disappointed that they don’t want their products measured by this standard anymore."

Apple still offers recycling programs through its website. Shaw Wu, an analyst at Sterne Agee, speculated to the Wall Street Journal that Apple might create an alternate standard for its own products. That however, is purely speculation at this point.