Notebooks and Tablet PCs Going "Green"

The Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool (EPEAT) has released it's evaluation for electronic products that meet "green" standards. Included in this test are desktops, monitors, notebooks and Tablet PCs. Of course, we are interested in knowing which of our favorite notebook/tablet manufactures are environmentally friendly.

EPEAT's system helps purchasers in the public and private sectors evaluate, compare and select notebooks and tablets based on their environmental attributes. EPEAT also provides a clear and consistent set of performance criteria for the design of products, and provides an opportunity for manufacturers to secure market recognition for efforts to reduce the environmental impact of their products.

EPEAT evaluates these products according to three tiers of environmental performance. If the notebooks meet the criteria they get ranked either Bronze, Silver or Gold. The complete set of performance criteria includes 23 required criteria and 28 optional criteria in 8 categories. To be EPEAT registered, products must meet all the required criteria, which ranks them as Bronze. The products that go above and beyond the criteria testing may achieve a higher EPEAT rating of Silver or Gold.

Out of the 140 notebook and Tablet PCs tested, 10 received Bronze, 116 received Silver and only 14 received Gold ratings. We were happy to see some of the notebooks and tablets we have reviewed made it on the list.

The Toshiba M9, MacBook Air and MacBook Pro, Dell Latitude D430, Fujitsu LifeBook T2010, T4220 and U810, and Lenovo's T61, R61 and X61 all received Silver awards. The Toshiba Portege R500, HP 2710p, Lenovo Thinkpad X300, OLPC and Dell D630 received Gold. These are only a few of the notebooks/tablets awarded, so check out the EPEAT's website to see the entire list.

The criteria these manufactures have to meet comes from the IEEE 1680 standard and is listed on EPEAT's website under Criteria Table. Manufactures have to meet these standards like "Large plastic parts free of PVC" and more to be able to register their notebooks.

Read More (EPEAT.net)

 

Thanks for the article Tiffany. It's going to become more and more the case that particular buyers will want to know how toxic a product they're buying is to the environment. European laws are also forcing notebook makers to comply to levels of certain materials in products, so even if the U.S. and other countries don't pass laws, if makers want to sell globally they'll have to make a product that's green enough to pass muster in the EU.

 

I agree. It's good for notebook makers to be aware of the environmental affects their products have. Now everything is going "green" so consumers are very interested in how they can help.

 

I was hoping for an analysis of Epeat's grading system, not just a blog-style link. Still, thanks for posting it. Another valuable 'green laptop' resource is Greenpeace's ranking of the electronics companies based on environmental friendliness: http://www.greenpeace.org/international/campaigns/toxics/electronics/how-the-companies-line-up

It's not specific to laptops, but if you want to know which companies are "overall" doing well on environmental issues, this is useful. They update roughly every quarter, and sometimes the rankings change dramatically based on what they've discovered or what the companies have changed. They're making an effort to evaluate companies based on actually looking at their products instead of going off of what the companies say in their press.