CeBIT isn't very green

FOR A SHOW that promised to be all about green issues and power saving, Cebit seems to have a long way to go.

Enviro-mentalists from Greenpeace have rapped the conference and its 5,500 exhibitors on the knuckles and scolded them for not having come far enough yet in their stated goal to bring the tech world through the polluted tunnel towards the big green solar powered light.

The environmental group tested this 37 of this year's conference offerings for overall green-ness on a point system rating them on factors such as energy efficiency, recyclability, and substitution of hazardous substances.

Only three products (all from electronics giant Sony) even came half way to gaining full points in Greenpeace's test. The Sony's Vaio TZ11 notebook, Sony Ericsson T650i mobile phone and Sony Ericsson P1i PDA were declared to be the show's greenest products, despite their still very disappointing green scores.

Greenpeace wants electronics manufacturers to take more responsibility for the eco friendliness of their products, from their development stage, all the way through to their production and manufacture. Replacing toxic or dangerous materials with safer ones would be a good start according to the organisation.

According to a recent study by research firm Gartner, global use of the internet alone requires the same amount of power as 14 power stations could provide and lets off as many carbon emissions as the entire airline industry does. And that, Zeina Al-Hajj, a Greenpeace campaigner told AFP, doesn't even include the emissions created by the manufacture and disposal of the world's millions of computers.

She reckons that the amount of waste generated through a lack of proper recycling comes to between 20 and 50 million tonnes a year. She also noted that most of that waste is "routinely and often illegally" shipped to countries with laxer environmental regulations like China, India and Vietnam.

Well, at least the show's participants are trying. When they can earn out of it. µ

L'Inq
Greenpeace Cebit blog (in German)