The Greenpeace green guide to electronics

If you ever wondered which electronics brands are greenest, Greenpeace has now calibrated a handy reference scale.


Apple is rotten, but I am pleased Nokia is doing best, although there is a lot of room for improvement. It will be fascinating to see how the industry responds to this Greenpeace initiative. :::[Your guide to green electronics]

Nokia and Dell share the top spot in the ranking. They believe that as producers they should bear individual responsibility for taking back and reusing or recycling their own-brand discarded products. Nokia leads the way on eliminating toxic chemicals, since the end of 2005 all new models of mobiles are free of polyvinyl chloride (PVC) and all new components to be free of brominated flame retardants (BFRs) from the start of 2007. Dell has also set ambitious targets for eliminating these harmful substances from their products.

Third place goes to HP, followed by Sony Ericsson (4th), Samsung (5th), Sony (6th), LG Electronics (7th), Panasonic (8th), Toshiba (9th), Fujitsu Siemens Computers (10th), Apple (11th), Acer (12th) and Motorola (13th).

Lenovo is in bottom position. It earns points for chemicals management and providing some voluntary product take back programmes, but it needs to do better on all criteria.

Download the full scorecard or the ranking criteria in pdf.

UPDATE: Well, Apple Inc. CEO Steve Jobs has responded to the Greenpeace Guide to Greener Electronics 'shame and name' campaign by pointing out that they have a policy of not telegraphing their plans, but in actuality they are in the same bracket, or ahead of many of their competition. The case he stated was that Apple did need to do better, not at 'greening', but at communicating that greening to customers, shareholders and the media. :::[PC World]

To kick off a change in that policy, Jobs noted that Apple no longer sells CRT monitors, which contain significant amounts of lead. He also said the company has completely eliminated hexavalent chromium and some brominated flame retardants from its products. Competitors, including Dell, HP and Lenovo Group Ltd., still market tube monitors, and as for the toxics he mentioned, Jobs said, "Some electronics companies, whose names you know, use these toxic chemicals in their products today."

Jobs also promised that Apple would eradicate arsenic and polyvinyl chloride from its products by the end of next year.

Fair enough. "I hope you are as delighted as I was when I first learned how far along Apple actually is in removing toxic chemicals from its products and recycling its older products," Jobs concluded. "We apologize for leaving you in the dark for this long." Apple goes green.

Environment