Greenpeace encourages us to Ecycle our telecom and Ewaste
The ranking is important because the amounts of toxic e-waste is growing everyday and it often ends up dumped in the developing world. Reducing the toxic chemicals in products reduces pollution from old products and makes recycling safer, easier and cheaper. Companies with good recycling schemes help ensure that their products don’t end up in the e-waste yards of Asia that don’t Ecycle.
“The scorecard will provide a dynamic tool to green the electronics sector by setting off a race to the top. By taking back their discarded products, companies will have incentives to eliminate harmful substances used in their products, since this is the only way they can ensure safe reuse and recycling of electronic waste,” said Iza Kruszewska, Greenpeace International toxins campaigner.
Nokia and Dell share the top spot in the ranking. They believe that asproducers they should bear individual responsibility for taking backand reusing or recycling their own-brand discarded products. Nokia leads the way on eliminating toxic chemicals, since the end of 2005 all new models of mobiles are free of polyvinyl chloride (PVC) and all new components to be free of brominated flame retardants (BFRs) from the start of 2007. Dell has also set ambitious targets for eliminating these harmful substances from their products.
Third place goes to HP, followed by Sony Ericsson (4th), Samsung (5th), Sony (6th), LG Electronics (7th), Panasonic (8th), Toshiba (9th), Fujitsu Siemens Computers (10th), Apple (11th), Acer (12th) and Motorola (13th).
Lenovo is in bottom position. It earns points for chemicals management and providing some voluntary product take back programs, but it needsto do better on all criteria.
“It is disappointing to see Apple ranking so low in the overall guide.They are meant to be world leaders in design and marketing, they shouldalso be world leaders in environmental innovation.” said Kruszewska.
Companies have the opportunity to move towards a greener ranking as theguide will be updated every quarter. However penalty points will be deducted from overall scores if we find a company lying, practicing double standards or other corporate misconduct. For now, companies are scored solely on information publicly available on their global websites.
~~ Ecyclepros can solve all of these issues with improper telecom and ewaste disposal for free at at the convenience of the company.
With a average score of only 4/10 it is clear that the electronics industry has a long way to go before it can make any claims to being a green industry.
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Here in Tampa we know first hand what telecom and Ewaste does to the environment, since Tampa Bay was severely polluted before proper disposal methods like Ecycling started being implemented. Tampa’s wetlands, being a diverse ecosystem home to many animals not found in other parts of the world, are extremely sensitive to Ewaste as the associated toxins can disrupt the foot web as well as the metabolism and brain function of the animals that ingest it. Let’s keep Tampa’s local and unique ecosystems free of telecom and Ewaste!