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It's not easy buying green, especially for those people purchasing monitors, desktops and laptops for large organizations. Generally, purchasing agents who buy millions of dollars worth of electronic equipment do not have the technical knowledge to sift through complicated product specifications to determine which equipment is most easily recyclable or has the least amount of toxic materials. Fortunately, a new IEEE standard aims to simplify this search process by establishing three levels of eco-friendly criteria that computers and monitors must meet.
The IEEE 1680 "Standard for Environmental Assessment of Personal Computer Products"—also known as the Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool (EPEAT)—is the first U.S. standard that provides guidelines for identifying environmentally friendly desktops, laptops and monitors.
"This standard makes it easy to identify what makes a green computer," says Jeff Scott, waste division director of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). "You don't have to be an expert to know when you're getting a product that is better for the environment."
Some institutional purchasers already had added language to their specifications about the amount of toxic materials or recycled components that would be allowed or required in each piece of equipment, but manufacturers encountered difficulty when designing their products to conform to many varying specs. EPEAT provides a single set of specifications that, in principle, all buyers and manufacturers could use.
The EPEAT standard seeks to accomplish eight major tasks, and, in doing so, established eight categories of equipment:
- Sets limits on the amount of environmentally sensitive materials such as cadmium, mercury, lead, hexavalent chromium, and certain flame-retardant chemicals found in a product.
- Declares the amount of recycled or reusable plastics in the equipment and set a minimum amount of biodegradable plastics to be included.
- Calls for a product that can be easily disassembled for recycling.
- Defines a computer that can be upgraded easily so it doesn't have to be replaced every three years, and allows consumers to purchase longer-term warranties.
- Specifies a computer or monitor that uses less energy than older models.
- Calls for programs to be established to take back equipment when the consumer no longer needs it or it is at the end of the product's life.
- Requires computer manufacturers to[is1] establish a corporate environmental policy for their products and processes and issue annual reports on the progress toward meeting their policy's goals.
- Eliminates toxic materials such as heavy metals from the boxes and crates computers and monitors are shipped in. Also, manufacturers must indicate the amount of recycled content used in the packaging.
The standard's working group appreciated that equipment makers could not produce computers and monitors to meet the same level of performance right away, and so they established three green-quality categories: gold, silver, and bronze. The standard lists 51 criteria, of which 23 are required. A product at the top, gold level meets all 23 required criteria plus 75 percent of the optional ones. For the silver level, the equipment must meet the required criteria plus at least 50 percent of the optional ones. At the bronze level, a product must adhere to all of the required criteria alone.
For example, computers at the bronze level would have a maximum amount of each specified toxic material, have a declared amount of recycled and recyclable plastic, and would operate efficiently and use low amounts of energy. Recycling a bronze-level computer would be easier than older units because now its outer housing would have to be snapped together and easy to disassemble, and it could not be built of components requiring special handling. Bronze computers also must be designed to be easily upgraded as technology improves.
For a product to qualify for the bronze level, the manufacturers must take back all old equipment and establish a corporate environmental policy. Finally, the packaging and boxes the green equipment comes must be made of nontoxic, recycled content and be recyclable or reusable.
A computer or monitor that meets the gold or silver level must meet more stringent green conditions. For example, it might have a solar-powered battery or be made of more recycled plastic than products in the bronze category.