Greenpeace names and shames top polluters

TREE-HUGGING outfit Greenpeace is giving the electronics industry a bit of pain with the release of this quarter’s Guide to Greener Electronics.

The Greenpeace report is tearing down the work done by thousands of marketeers by naming and shaming some of the industry heavyweights, despite the industry’s best efforts to pass on a greener hue of eco-friendliness. The GGE claims that some of the biggest 'electronics' companies have done very little in the way of cleaning up their acts – all save Sharp, Fujitsu-Siemens and Philips.

We fail to see where Philips is cleaning up its act when the Greenpeace site has a page just for Philips and the company’s attitude on e-waste is – quote – “pushing a senseless and irresponsible approach”. The report itself shows Philips tanking in the ranking.

Greenpeace had this to say about the lot: “All the other companies in the Guide make vague or essentially meaningless statements about global emissions reductions and have no plans to make absolute emissions cuts themselves.”

The green team is pushing for carbon emissions reductions (rather than carbon offsetting) in the here and now, so it's being a bit blunter about the state of affairs than usual.

The GGE measures how well companies are cleaning up their acts based on three criteria: the presence of toxic materials in their electronic products; what said company does in the product’s after-life (recycling, take-backs policies); and, corporate policies with respect to climate and energy use.

What transpires is that all these companies are terrible at reporting back their eco-friendly attitudes, when they actually come by them.

Nokia, which, even with a serious attitude towards the environment, has dropped from 7 to 6.9-out-of-10 due to the new ranking criteria, is in the way of improving its recycling efficiency (although they have a serious take-back programme). The company draws 25 per cent of its power requirements from renewable sources.

The star (if you can call it that) in this quarter’s Guide to Greener Electronics is Nintendo. Singled out, naughty Nintendo is the biggest infringer on the environment by failing to produce any measurable advances in terms of CO2 emissions and the lack of any set dates for phasing out noxious nasties. Unfortunately for Nintendo, its success has been its downfall, as a proposed 2 per cent reduction in CO2 emissions has gone up in smoke as demand for Wii products surged.

That earned them a massive 0.8 out of 10 score.

We're pretty sure Nintendo will go public to rebuke this, as one of the reasons it got such great scores was the PR people were taking a nap. µ

L'Inq
Guide to Greener Electronics