Our scorecard highlights which of the major electronics companies is
doing the most to remove the worst toxic chemicals from their products
and which companies have good recycling programs for their products
Full ranking
Click here for the ranking
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.
"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 toxics campaigner.
Nokia and
Dell share the top spot in the ranking. They believe that as
producers they should bear individual responsibility for taking back
and 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 programmes, but it needs
to 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 should
also be world leaders in environmental innovation." said Kruszewska.
Companies have the opportunity to move towards a greener ranking as the
guide will be updated every quarter. However penalty points will be
deducted from overall scores if we find a company lying, practising
double standards or other corporate misconduct. For now, companies are
scored solely on information publicly available on their global
websites.
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.
Download the
full scorecard as a pdf document.
Download the
ranking criteria as a pdf document.