Why the downvote? What's wrong with the idea of giving consumers a choice on how 'green' they want to be? [Don't get me started on the whole 'green' bullshit.]
Because Apple has decided it is part of their image to be 'green' and a consequence of that is that they cannot use things like halogen-containing SSD's. Apple doesn't consist of hippies; they have a brand name to uphold. It's a trade-off and calling that 'retarded' means you completely missed their rational reasons for not using halogen-containing SSD's.