Greenpeace today published their 15th version of their Guide to Greener Electronics. In it, they give companies like Nokia, Apple, HP, Sony, and others a score out of 10 on how the company is doing in important green efforts in the categories of chemicals, e-waste, and energy. The organization has been publishing these guides regularly since August 2006.
Our three goals for this guide are to get companies to:
- Clean up their products by eliminating hazardous substances.
- Take back and recycle their products responsibly once they become obsolete.
- Reduce the climate impacts of their operations and products.
While I’m not a fan of Greenpeace for their usually more radical approaches to speaking on the Earth’s behalf, as part of Green IT the Greener Electronics Guide interested me. Companies are ranked on a scale of Bad, Partially Bad, Partially Good, and Good in the general areas of complying to Green directives, phasing out toxic chemicals, recycling, using renewable energy, and creating more energy efficient new models. Eighteen companies were ranked and currently land in this order:
- Nokia
- Sony Ericsson
- Philips
- Motorola
- Apple
- Panasonic
- Sony
- HP
- Sharp
- Dell
- Acer
- LGE
- Samsung
- Toshiba
- Fujitsu
- Microsoft
- Lenovo
- Nintendo
Greenpeace.org/electronics is a resource for learning more about supporting the right backer with your purchases. You can view and compare companies’ histories with an interactive graph and learn more about the Guide to Greener Electronics at the Greenpeace press center.
You can view the complete Guide to Greener Electronics [PDF] for an interesting read of how some of your favorite tech companies are doing.