Greenpeace rates the industry, shows some improvement

I can’t speak for everyone, but I have this sort of love/hate relationship with Greenpeace. On one hand, they can go overboard at times with how they treat certain things. On the other hand, their a great way to show just how green the tech industry is. Greenpeace went to CES to judge the industry, and has announced part of their findings.

Turns out that the industry still doesn’t have any fully “green” products in the eyes of Greenpeace. They found that there were fewer products with harmful materials including PVC plastic and hazardous chemicals. There was also an effort shown on the part of companies to meet the new Energy Star requirements. The Electronics tended to have more LEDs as opposed to light bulbs, and that more products are made from post-consumer materials, making them more environmentally friendly.

Greenpeace individually scored the top 50 products from 15 companies that chose to participate. Each product was graded in four categories: toxic chemical phase out, energy efficiency, product lifespan and energy used in production. There were also extra points given for unique innovation. Of all the products scored, the highest given was a 6.8 out of 10 given to the Lenovo L2440x wide computer monitor, which is said to be much better than every other monitor submitted. The closest product category mentioned was televisions, with the Sharp LC-52GX5 scoring a 5.92. Greenpeace also rated the industry as a whole, giving it an 8.6 rating.

The companies that participated are: Acer, Dell, Fujitsu Siemens, Hewlett Packard, Lenovo, LG Electronics, Motorola, Nokia, Panasonic, RIM/Blackberry, Sharp, Samsung, Sony, Sony Ericsson and Toshiba. Those who didn’t participate, but were asked to, include: Apple, Asus, Microsoft, Nintendo, Palm, and Philips.

Read [Greenpeace]