Greenpeace’s polite call for cleaner/greener electronics - by Doug Mohney

Views and Opinions on Green IT (Jan 27 2010)

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   Greenpeace is not typically known for playing nice, but its annual report on “Greener electronics” released at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) a few weeks ago wasn’t exactly fire and brimstone – no calls for boycotts, no dramatic media action to block harmful chemicals from reaching manufacturers.  Instead, manufacturers simply received “penalty points” in a report and an admonition to do better.  How boring!

    Instead, HP got a “Best in Show” award from Greenpeace for building the HP Compaq 8000f Elite Ultra Slim Desktop PC, proportedly the first free of brominated flame retardants (BFRs) and polyvinyl chloride (PVC) “from the wall to the mouse.  Overall, HP trailed Apple, Sony Ericsson and Nokia in Greenpeace’s “Guide to Green Electronics.”

    Samsung got “Worst in Show” because only its latest models of mobile phones are free of toxic chemicals and the company has backslide on promises to phase out bad stuff, moving its deadline to get its notebooks clean by January 2011 and it has no timetable to get toxic substances out of TVs and household appliances.

    Dell, Lenovo, and LGE also picked up penalty points for backsliding on promises to phase out PVC vinyl plastic and BFRs by the end of 2009.  These companies have pushed phase out to 2011 and later.

   Greenpeace wants companies to “actively support” bans on PVC, BFRs and chlorinated flame retardants (CFRs) during an upcoming revision of European legislation restricting hazardous substances in electronics and singled out HP and Dell to jump on the bandwagon; Apple and Sony Ericsson – not exactly major players in data center servers – got pats on the head for supporting the legislation.

    How this will directly play out in data center purchases is unclear, since data centers are more focused today on reducing energy consumption than the types of nasties used to build servers. However, in the competition to appear “Greener,” cleaner hardware purchasing practices will likely appear on the checklist in the future. 

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