Searching For "Greener" Electronics

The survey, "Searching for Greener Electronics," studied 37 products voluntarily submitted by 14 electronics manufacturers on four sets of criteria: energy efficiency, use of hazardous materials, product lifecycle and innovation / marketing, awarding points on a 1 to 10 scale. Although Sony swept the winners with models in the notebook computer, mobile phone and PDA categories, those products were notable only because they were the sole products to break the 5-point limit.

Despite the rather dismal rankings for the bulk of these products, Greenpeace said that its findings do suggest that the industry is taking significant steps toward green electronics. The report's authors find that the industry is moving out in front of existing regulations, like RoHS and WEEE, and that manufacturers and purchasers alike are quickly responding to the demand for toxic-free and energy efficient products, despite years of neglect on both of those fronts.

Even though the manufacturing side may be stepping up to the task, Greenpeace found that all the companies in its survey are still not taking a product's entire lifecycle into account -- working as hard on end-of-life concerns like recycling and reuse as they are on minimizing the impacts of production in the first place.