Friday, June 27, 2008

Guide to Greener Electronics now captures carbon

The 8th edition of Greenpeace’s Guide to Greener Electronics has expanded it's criteria to include both the direct and indirect carbon footprints of a manufacturer's products. An indirect footprint includes emissions from the embedded energy that goes into manufacturing and distributing a product.

Only two companies - Sony Ericsson and Sony – score above 5/10. The overall score of the ranked companies has plummeted as Greenpeace tightened requirements on electronic waste (e-waste) and toxic chemicals and adds new requirements for evaluating companies’ impact on global warming.

“Electronics giants pay attention to environmental performance on certain issues while ignoring
others that are just as important,” said Casey Harrell, Greenpeace International Toxics Campaigner. “Philips, for example, scores well on chemicals and energy criteria but earns a zero on e-waste since it has no global take-back policies. Philips would score higher if it took responsibility for its own branded e-waste and established equitable global take-back schemes.”

Many companies score well on energy efficiency as their products comply and exceed Energy Star standards. The best performers on energy efficiency are Sony Ericsson and Apple, with all of their models meeting, and many exceeding, Energy Star requirements. Sony Ericsson stands out as the first company to score almost top marks on all of the chemicals criteria. With all new Sony Ericsson models being PVC-free, the company also has met the new chemicals criterion in the ranking, having already banned antimony, beryllium and phthalates from models launched
since January 2008.


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