Since August 2006, Greenpeace is releasing a “Guide to Greener Electronics” where they are looking at various hardware manufacturers and their policies on toxic chemicals and recycling. 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. If you look at the chart of companies shown above, you will notice that Apple - for example - is not that “green” when it comes to recycling components and usage of toxic chemicals with their products (only ranking 6 out of 10). Of course, the latest report (which is from December 2007) does not include the new MacBook Air. And the detailed report says that Apple is trying hard to produce more eco-friendly hardware. Just have a look at the detailed report (pdf file). On the other hand I did not expect that Sony Ericsson, Sony, Dell, Lenovo (former IBM) and Samsung are the current leaders in that chart. I think that could be their strategy to catch up with Apple’s position as an innovation leader. Although I would love to see Apple to combine both, environmental friendly hardware as well as cutting-edge innovation and design! I am looking forward to the next report released by Greenpeace, including the new Apple products. Take a detail look at the current report (from December 2007 and links to all detailed reports as pdf files) here. Previous versions of the guide are available online as well: August 2006, December 2006, April 2007, June 2007 and September 2007. Less