Find Out Now If Your Phone, Computer, Tablet and More are Green Gadgets!
We all have electronics (some more than others!) – and there’s no denying that smartphones, computers, fitness trackers, tablets and other gadgets have changed our world massively. Think about what you’ve got in your own home and/or office. Are they green gadgets?
Here’s how to find out.
With so much hype attached to new product launches, it’s understandable that you could easily focus on the gadget and its features, and forget about the environmental impact.
And – it’s just one phone, right? What difference can it make?
Wrong!
Literally BILLIONS of electronic gadgets are made, packaged, transported, sold and discarded each year. And so they have a truly massive impact on the planet.
Because the impact is so huge, Greenpeace has rated the largest electronics companies on their environmental impact – and the results aren’t comforting.
Many of these corporations promote their green achievements and sell themselves as forward-thinking, innovative and environmentally-conscious IT companies. And it’s certainly true that many of them have made improvements.
But 70 – 80 percent of the environmental impact or carbon footprint of electronic gadgets occurs during their manufacturing. That’s significant because:
- It makes it difficult for ordinary consumers to know how green the gadgets are (because the manufacturing information is not easy to find)
- Raw materials for gadgets involve dangerous mining practices and the use of hazardous chemicals.
- Most manufacturing processes use fossil fuels which are worsening climate change
- Poorly-designed products designed to be quickly replaced drive over-consumption of the Earth’s resources.
Green Gadgets – The Best (and Worst) Companies
So, Greenpeace looked at what 17 of the world’s leading consumer electronics companies are doing to address their environmental impacts. Here’s how they stack up:
Or, to put it another way, here are the scores that Greenpeace gave these companies:
- Fairphone: B
- Apple: B-
- Dell: C+
- HP: C+
- Lenovo: C-
- Microsoft: C-
- Acer: D+
- LG: D+
- Sony: D+
- Google: D+
- Huawei: D
- Asus: D
- Samsung: D-
- Amazon: F
- Oppo: F
- Vivo: F
- Xiaomi: F
For information on how they earned those grades, download the full 2017 Company Report Card (PDF).
More Interesting Findings on Green Gadgets
The Greenpeace report makes interesting reading, not just for its ratings.
Apart from providing a very easy-to-use list of which companies are greener (and which to avoid), (see the graphic above), they also noted the following:
(Not) Green Gadgets: Planned Obsolescence is Alive and Well
I was a teenager when I first heard of planned obsolescence – and I was horrified. (Our 2-year-old washing machine had just broken and the cost of repairing it was almost as much as buying a new one. The previous model had lasted about 15 years).
Planned obsolescence is certainly a great way to keep customers buying – and to fuel our “buy-consume-discard” mentality.
From un-repairable models to frequent new product launches, Greenpeace found that Apple, Microsoft and Samsung are some of the worst offenders.
HP, Dell and Fairphone do better – they have some products that can be repaired or upgraded instead of tossing and buying a new one.
(Not) Green Gadgets: e-Waste
The e-waste problem is huge – more than 65 million metric tons globally – just this year.
Some companies offer take-back programs, but there’s little reporting on what is being collected or where it goes.
Greenpeace found that companies often don’t recycle properly – sometimes shipping it to countries where components are retrieved in ways that are harmful to both human and environmental health.
(Not) Green Gadgets: Dirty Energy in the Supply Chain
Several major IT companies are changing to renewable energy in their offices and data centers to renewable energy, which is great.
But very few have addressed dirty energy in their supply chains, the report found. And there is a huge lack of transparency in this area.
How To Get Green Gadgets
It’s clear that the big IT companies are not doing as much as they should to be genuinely green.
While you wait for them to get more environmentally conscious, Greenpeace suggests that you:
- Vote with your wallet – choose well-made, long-lasting, repairable gadgets.
- Keep your devices as long as they still work.
- Repair instead of replace gadgets.
- Recycle all your old devices.
- Communicate with the electronics manufacturers, and tell them you want products that keep the health of the planet in mind.
And I would also add – don’t buy it unless you really, really need it!
Conclusion
Most electronic devices (smartphones, computers, tablets, fitness trackers etc.) have a massively detrimental impact on the environment – even though they are sold by companies who often promote themselves as environmentally conscious.
Much of the eco impact of these devices occurs during manufacture, first with harmful mining practices, then with factories powered by fossil fuels that pollute and cause climate change.
This “take-make-waste” business model employed by device manufacturers is a huge problem for the planet. Cheap manufacturing (because the cost is paid by the environment) combined with planned obsolescence cause consumers to keep tossing and buying new – putting even greater strain on our finite resources.
Shaving a millimeter off a phone, adding more megapixels – is this the best innovation these huge companies can conceive?
Why not focus instead on how devices are made—with renewable energy, reusable materials, and long-lasting design.
THAT is a circular business model that other sectors can follow.
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Have you hired a skip? Do you know what happened to your waste? Let me know in the comments below.
Warm regards,
P.S. Don’t forget to download your free green living handbook “Live Well, Live Green” here.
Related:
- Is it good or bad to be given a fitness tracker in the workplace?
- How to choose the greenest and most ecofriendly appliances for your home
[…] What’s the secret – and how can you tell if your gadgets are green or not? Find out here. […]
Great information here. We wipe hard drives and recycle everything possible and pass on things to others if we upgrade. I liked the world of pen and paper and old telephones though there was no way to communicate easily with my family in other countries before. There is some advantage and disadvantage to everything. I’ve often wondered what would happen if we dumped a lot of our waste into an active volcano. Just thinking?