Dell and Nokia the Most Green (Tech) Companies

da_matta writes "Greenpeace has ranked top electronics companies on their attitudes towards ecology. In addition to what toxic materials are used in manufacturing, the report on "greeness", for example, considers how the recycling of old products is handled and how ecological issues are considered in company processes and decisions. Idea is that the ranking is updated quarterly, and companies would like achieve to the top position. Dell and Nokia take the top position with a rating of 7/10, with Apple, Acer, Motorola and Lenovo falling behind with ratings worse than 3/10."

Green Product Development

Something interesting about tech companies is that concern for the environment is something that comes in usually later in the company's lifetime--after they've become millionaires. Because being green is, unfortunately, usually more expensive than the alternative.

Let's say you're making computer monitors in the early 90s and you start developing prototypes. You produce a 19" model that works well. Now, you could sink more money into the project and try to think of alterations to the design so that the chemicals inside the cathode ray tube can be safely removed before disposal ... but you're not even sure how many of these will be made and the market's not looking so good and you just want to start turning a profit. Plus you have all the other guys to compete with and they don't have any sort of thing like this nor does the government demand it.

Now it's ten years later and you're well off as a company selling tens of thousands of units each year. And you get a letter saying that because your product contains harmful chemicals, you've scored low in some newspaper rating for green companies. Plus, you want to tap the hippie market and score more profits. What do you have to do to make your product 'green'? Well, what would have been a design change in the beginning is no longer possible. Not only do you have to do that but you have to change all your manufacturing plants and work out the new source for the changes in these products. Plus you've got all that inventory and raw materials sitting around waiting to be made into new monitors. Well, it just doesn't seem worth it anymore. Even if you offer dismantling them as a service, you'll have to charge nearly as much as the monitor costs--is this even realistic?

The sad fact is that (most of the time) green products need to start out as green otherwise there's a very good chance their success will allow their manufacturers to overlook the benefits from being a green product. It needs to be a design time concern. Computers have valuable metals in them--can you see an easy way of extracting these? It's a pretty complicated process right now and I don't think it's very efficient. Nobody seems concerned with asking themselves where the product goes when it's done because initially they're not afraid of making an environmental impact. But if all companies have this shortsightedness then we're bound to suffer. As good little consumers, we buy the best product (hail capitalism) and we evaluate the products based on commonly held beliefs about quality and service. Unfortunately, we lack the foresight to imagine what we do with the product when it's (usually short) life span is over.

When your CD player breaks, what do you do with it? In the old days, if a phonograph broke, you took it to a skilled craftsman who fixed it. Today we throw things away and just buy a new one constantly. This is because the labor involved with fixing the old unit is more costly than a new unit. In doing this, we really build up staggering amounts of trash--the EPA estimates that U.S. citizens generate 4.6 lbs of trash per day [epa.gov]. Doesn't this seem like something that is going to become a logistical nightmare?

Re:Green Product Development

As good little consumers, we buy the best product (hail capitalism) and we evaluate the products based on commonly held beliefs about quality and service.

And as more and more people become concerned with the mess we are creating, "greeness" gets added to the list of criteria they use to select their next purchase. Smart companies (EG Dell and Nokia) perceive this new customer need and fullfill it, thereby taking that small (but growing) niche market. Eventually, due to competitive pressure, other companies follow suit. Then we have a little "green" war where each tries to outdo the other ...

Hail capitalism.

Costs Less Green too

Interesting Dell & Nokia seem to cost the least green too =)

Too bad...

I work on a Lenovo and it really behaves as if it was made out of recycled parts.

Server is getting slow...

Karma whoring... Heres the contents of the article before it gets /.'ed

This Green Electronics Guide ranks leading mobile and PC manufacturers on their global policies and practice on eliminating harmful chemicals and on taking responsibility for their products once they are discarded by consumers. Companies are ranked solely on information that is publicly available.

7 Nokia - Good but room for improvement on amounts recycled. More

7 Dell - Points lost for not yet having models without the worst chemicals. Strong support for takeback. More

5.7 Hewlett Packard - Timelines only to provide plan for toxics phase out. Good on amounts recycled. More

5.3 Sony Ericsson - Some models without some of the worst chemicals, but bad on precautionary principle and take back. More

5 Samsung - Points for toxic phase out but not good on take back and recycling. More

4.7 Sony - Some models without the worst chemicals, but bad on precautionary principle and take back. More

4.3 LGE - Points for toxic phase out date but bad on take back. More

3.3 Panasonic - Only good on chemicals management. More

3 Toshiba - Some models without the worst chemicals, but no timelines for elimination and poor on takeback. More

3 Fujitsu-Siemens - Points for some models free of worst chemicals, but poor on takeback. More

2.7 Apple - Low scores on almost all criteria. More

2.3

  Acer - Should do better on all criteria. More

1.7 Motorola - Points for chemicals management. Recently broke clean up promise. More

1.3 Lenovo - The lowest score of all companies. More

Ranking criteria explained

The ranking criteria reflect the demands of the Toxic Tech campaign to the electronics companies. Our two demands are that companies should:

  * clean up their products by eliminating hazardous substances;

  * takeback and recycle their products responsibly once they become obsolete.

The two issues are connected. The use of harmful chemicals in electronics prevents their safe recycling when the products are discarded. Companies scored marks out of 30 this has then been calculated to a mark out of 10 for simplicity.

Follow the more link beside each company for the full details of their score. The full criteria for scoring the companies is available. Download the full pdf of the scorecard.

Each score is based solely on public information on the companies website. Companies found not to be following their published policies will be deducted penalty point in future versions of the guide.

The guide is updated every 3 months. The current version was published on the 25 August 2006.

Disclaimer: Our 'Guide to Greener Electronics' aims to clean up the electronics sector and get manufacturers to take responsibility for the full life cycle of their products, including the electronic waste that their products generate. The guide does not rank companies on labour standards, energy use or any other issues, but recognises that these are important in the production and use of electronics products.

Re:Server is getting slow...

Apple 'what is backwards compatibility' computers is not up the top of the greens, even after they make it so batteries (generally) have to be replaced by their support team instead of third parties? What a shock! I think most of the Apple faithful that I have met are of the 'I love being green but am always too busy to recycle' mindset and so wonder if that is the same with Apple themselves.

enviornmental stewardship

IMO the most imporant factor for rating a companies "greeness" is the prominace of the pharse "enviornmental stewardship" in its corporate mission statement.

Reducing waste

Of course Dell is up there, their Laptops displose of themselves!

Dell?

Did they take the power consumption of Wintell machines into account here?

Sony

Sony should be higher on the list now that they're recalling X million toxic battery bombs. At least they could get some good press for it somehow!

A reason why Dell and Nokia migtht be near to the

top, despite what we might have thought (cheap evil makers of bits by the million) is that they sell huge volumes into offices worldwide. It tends to be companies that have to follow EU or national recycling guidelines on equipment - whereas the home user can just take his old monitor to the dump.
Makes sense if in the future you're going to have to dispose of a few thousand monitors, you'd ensure they offered disposal.
I am surpised Apple was quite so low on the list, but I guess as they're mainly selling directly to individual consumers, there's no real pressure on them to provide an ecologically sound(er) product - and if you were after a MAc, as they're the only seller.... (i.e. I could see a green company say choosing Dell over HP on that basis, but if you need a Mac, Apple have your sale).

Re:A reason why Dell and Nokia migtht be near to t

I am surpised Apple was quite so low on the list

That's because you've been reading Apple's environment page [apple.com], which is peppered with feel good phrases such as "Apple helps to safeguard the environment" and "Apple recognizes its responsibility as a global citizen"

Apple talking the talk, but not walking the walk. Again.

Oh - and Dell & Nokia are near the top because they've made a greater effort to be green than the other companies.

RTA

Download and read the Apple PDF. Apple is low on the list because the website you point to is what Greenpeace reviewers were reading (along with other Apple-released material). Throughout the PDF, Greenpeace "researchers" admit to giving Apple low scores because Apple hadn't publicly released any information. Without that information, they assumed it was bad. This would be fine if Greenpeace were reporting on the quality of company press releases. As it stands, their report is very misleading.

This is not a case of Apple refusing to "walk the walk", this is a case of Greenpeace compiling a misleading report (again); this time blaming Apple for walking with the lights out.

Apple is an especially secretive company. Its busy legal team and history of company secret related firings and court cases should be enough to tell us this alone, if not its more recent attitude toward distributions of Leopard (the upcoming OS X) found online or even the secrecy under which even its flagship retail store was constructed. For some, this evokes paranoia. For others, frustration. As an environmentally concerned consumer, Greenpeace's ranking of Apple does affect my desire to purchase hardware from the company in spite of obvious flaws in their review system.

Yay for dell..

Especially when they were exclusively Intel and the power draw of Intel Prescotts was 2x that of Athlon 64s.

Dell Self Disposal

Dell, Now with Self disposal support. the reason why dell is a green company is because their most toxic part (the batteries) automatically sef distruct to get rid of pollution.



BUY DELL!... Dude I got a... arson report.

Rotten Apple

In 12/2005, my still-under-warranty iPod was gathering bad sectors on the drive. The "genius" at the Apple store said bad sectors were normal, and to just reformat it. After being quite persistent, he relented and gave me a replacement. But not before charging me a $30 "recycling fee". Bullshit! Given that they'll use all the parts, save for maybe the battery, again, I find it quite hard to believe that the battery costs $30 to recycle. FWIW, the way out of this fee is to purchase the Apple extended service plan. And then go back the next day and return just the service plan.

I know there's more to being green than just recycling batteries and parts, but Apple should be put under a microscope to make sure the money they're collecting for "recycling" is placed directly into "green" programs.

Some not-so-surprising revelations...

1.3 Lenovo - The lowest score of all companies.
7 Dell - Points lost for not yet having models without the worst chemicals. Strong support for takeback.

Given the origin of some of the parts and some of the practices of their host country, that wasnt a surprise. Dell, however has to have a good policy given the throwaway quality of their post-offshoring era machines.

No thanks to Greenpeace, I value quality a lot more than how (ecologically)green a company is.

That's unpossible!

My plastic Crocs are the ultimate hippy shoe. That they are made out of never biodegradable plastic is something you're not supposed to notice.

Seriously, this is about the manufacturing process not the products. As long as products are built in China, India and other places that can't afford to implement environmental LAWS, then this is what you get. Of course, when they do, you will not want to pay the extra expense of their products which will then be built in Vietnam, Sri Lanka and Africa. And so on.

What would greenpeace rate?

I've always considered there is something rotten with the political grandstanding of greenpeace.

A better question is what would be the truthfull assessment of greenness of greenpeace be? After all the produce nothing, the only effect they have is to prevent actions. They are the last word in paracitical, pointless organisations - dedicated to the idea that to do nothing is the best course. And yet the burn up valuable resources steaming around the world.

Take the money and energy wasted by greenpeace and put it into something with purpose that actually supports environmental progress rather than political positioning.

Greeness?

Is that the degree to which something grees? Seemed odd, so I conducted some scientific research [googlefight.com] to back up the claim.
 

How much do consumers care?

I've been selling and servicing PC's for 11 years now and never once has power consumption or environmentally friendly disposal been a factor in the purchase decision. I don't believe that the majority of people really care what happens when they throw out their PC. Their two choices are 1)throw it in the dumpster, or 2)take it to someplace that recycles/refurbishes old equipment. Most people throw it in the dump because #2 takes too much effort or costs them too much.

People buy Dell because of the price, and occasionally because they received some good service. People buy Nokia and Motorolla because of good product and the fact that it is shoved in their faces by nearly every wireless company. Nobody who wants a Mac is going to switch and buy a PC because they had a low green score.

I think that the "green" streak is being fed by a small by vocal minority. Yes, if everyone was educated on the environmental factors and it was convenient for them to go along with recommendations based on contributing to the overall health of the environment, you might see some purchasing decisions swayed. Mostly on the large corporate level.

Green Tax

If foreign companies that pollute more than even US law allows *cough*China*cough* paid import taxes to cover the costs of their pollution, a lot more Americans would buy the cleaner, Greener products produced (more) domestically. That kind of protection of our markets and environment would keep the US greener, both cleaner and richer.

It _is_ easy being green...

It's no suprise that Dell ranks highly. They don't do any electronics manufacturing (a dirty process) - they simply assemble components they source from other vendors. I'm sure they would've scored far worse if the manufacturing processes of their supliers were included in the ranking.

indirect greenness

Does this take into account the greenness of the outsourced companies that provide any infrastructure services for Dell? I'm assuming from the conversations (accents, phone lag) that I've had with Dell tech support on behalf of my friends/family that have purchased Dell hardware that a big part of their call center op's are non-US based and not owned by them.

Sun Microsystems?

Interesting that Sun Microsystems didn't even rate a mention, even though they've bet a lot of the company on being more energy efficient than the competition.

Turtle Wings

Something that's been around the midatlantic for a while is a company called "Turtle Wings". My company uses them for disposing of electronic equipment and they even pick it up. Sure, there's a cost, but it's actually not that bad.

http://www.turtlewings.com/ [turtlewings.com]

A Cautionary Note...

Dislcaimer: I studied Environmental Economics at university. I do believe in protecting the environment, and would take a radical approach in doing so in many cases.

However, this report may not be what it seems to be. Very little data is provided as to how they have gathered their information. Assessing the environmental impact of even a small company, or doing an audit of same, is a very large task requiring weeks and weeks of onsite anlysis and testing. It is time consuming and requires a great deal of access to confidential business processes.

I, for one, do not believe for one single second that Greenpeace was given access to such data.

Greenpeace as an organisation gathers very large sums of money annually. Legally and fiscally Greenpeace is not a charity. There are many questions as to what they do with the money they raise. A few annual publicity stunts involving a handful of people, publicity material, and the running of a small ship, do not adequately explain where the money goes.

Greenpeace was famously incorrect in its stance against the Brent Spar disposal and provably lied during that campaign.

I would be astonished if this report was anything other than propaganda - you may draw your own conclusions as to why some companies should be favoured over others. But it cannot be as a result of balanced investigation and scientific method, unless they've arrived at the right result by accident.

I do believe that all companies should report their environmental impact truthfully as a result of a defined reporting standard in their annual reports. This is the only way such data can be accurately compared and contrasted. Some companies do do this volutarily, but we are a long way from an accepted standard method of reporting or auditing thereof.

Yay!

Now greenpeace has the ability to use the publicity they get to shake down companies for "contributions."

"Hey, Mr. CEO, it would be a real shame if your company was downgraded to not-so-green in our next report. You could go a long way to showing your support for the environment by tossing a few bucks our way."

Don't think for a second that won't happen.

Dell Batteries

Shoot, Dell must be one of the most green companies, besides providing me with a box and paid postage to return my Sony-made incendiary/battery, they named the recall program Project BumbleBee! Hopefully it isn't named for the buzzing sound right before your battery goes critical.

More Green?

Shouldn't it be "greener" not "more green"?

Not purely self-serving

I have worked for Nokia since 1999.

Every desk in large offices - i.e. the ones that don't need to use local contract cleaning agencies - has had a 3-compartment trash bin under the desk the whole time, for recycling. The large Finnish offices are perfect examples of energy conservation in a cold country by the correct design to naturally distribute sunlight.

I play a game in Finnish offices where if I want to carry on working after 9pm, I have to jump up and run around the office every five minutes, otherwise the lights go out to save energy.

Conservation and environmental awareness to a culture in and of itself. You don't get a genuinely high ranking like we do unless you really mean it. It certainly can and does have short term economic benefits too, maybe that is even the strategy. Who knows what motive really went in to the policy, but I guarantee you that on the ground and amongst individual Nokia people, it is a culture and one that people are happy and proud of.

Things work on a different scale in small Nokia offices. I worked out of the now defunct Peterborough, UK office a couple of years ago. They used to recycle Friday's roast dinner into Monday's curry.

Obviously I am not an official voice of Nokia. Just a happy employee currently working on http://www.nokiaforbusiness.com/americas/firewall. html [nokiaforbusiness.com]

Something's wrong with this list...

Dell and Nokia? Ah ah ah! This is a joke. Since Nokia started producing cell-phones it also produced mountains of batteries. Dell has only recently taken measures to recycle PCs and make them greener. As far as I know Dell doesn't take back its old junk. It doesn't even take back computers left on lease for 3 years! I say something's fishy like maybe Greenpeace got cheaper price on Dell laptops and Nokia GSMs.
___________
Sorry no clever signature. If you find one I can use, the beer's on me.

Dell not green on packaging

I recently purchased a monitor from Dell. It came in three boxes. One was the monitor itself, the second was a power cord, which, I suppose is semi-justifiable because that will be the part which changes depending on teritory, but the third was a 30-page product manual (printed in 12 languages, of course). It's this kind of lazy packaging that really makes me doubt the thoroughness of Greenpeace's research into Dell's stance on the environment.

The company I work for buys all their PCs from Dell, and the amount of packaging that is unrecyclable that we have to dispose of is just disgusting. Dell might practice some green policies, but they pass a lot of their responsibility for the environment on to their consumers. I'd really like to see fewer plastics and polystyrene used to package their hardware.

Promises, promises!

I note that Fujitsu-Siemens receive a very poor rating. I know for a fact* that this is not representative. Let me shed a thin ray of light:

A number of the listed companies evaluated here have been measured on their *promises and intents*. FSC has answered on what they actually *do* -- and not even what they are capable of. For instance, some FSC desktops are marked as "not pvc free" only because customers insist on MS mice, and MS uses pvc in the mouse cord.

I won't go in deeper detail -- I'd get bashed anyway -- but I will say that this evaluation is not to be taken at face value.

*Disclaimer: a family member is employed at the main factory of FSC.

Re:Huh?

Since when are those "yahoos at Greenpeace" idiot extremist eco-terrorists? I reckon the companies ranking badly in this Green Electronics Guide are the eco-terrorists. And better sources of information? Link one :)

Re:Huh?

I'm waiting for PETA's report on how many ickle wittle bunny wunny's die to make PCs.

Seriously though, green policies can actually save you money. A PC which shuts down while inactive, or which uses cooler / low power chips is going to save you a quite a bit of money over its lifetime.

Re:Count your syllables, please.

I always thought that was the funnest rule in grammar.

Re:Huh?

In this "post 9/11 world" it's good to label everyone you don't agree with a terrorist, because then everyone else will know *just how bad* they suck!

Re:Out with the old...?

Unlike macs, pc's are actually sold into businesses where they are replaced on a set schedule that's dictated by economics. In the real world there's no room for such an irrational attachment to a piece of electronics as you apparently have. Machines serve out their usefulness and get discarded. How's the web browser on your IIe?

Re:I have undertaken my own "Communist" rating sys

Anti-communists have killed millions more people than communists.