Sony and Sony Ericsson are the best performers according to the
pressure group's scorecard, while Nintendo and Microsoft are the
worst.
Only two companies scored more than five out of ten in the
report, down from 14 companies reaching that standard in spring's
report.
Greenpeace has produced four reports a year since 2006,
assessing the major electronics makers on their use of toxic
chemicals, their commitment to recycling and their energy
consumption.
"The ranking criteria reflect the demands of the Toxic Tech
campaign to electronics companies. Our two demands are that
companies should clean up their products by eliminating hazardous
substances; and take back and recycle their products responsibly
once they become obsolete," said the report. "The two issues are
connected: the use of harmful chemicals in electronic products
prevents their safe recycling once the products are discarded."
The new report adds extra emphasis on the energy consumption of
the products in order to reflect increasing worries about the
effect of using energy on the environment.
"Given the increasing evidence of climate change and the urgency
of addressing this issue, Greenpeace has added new energy criteria
to encourage electronics companies to improve their corporate
policies and practices with respect to Climate and Energy," said
Greenpeace.
"The presence of toxic substances in electronics perpetuates the
toxic cycle – during reprocessing of electronic waste and by using
contaminated secondary materials to make new products," it said.
"Substituting harmful chemicals in the production of electronics
will prevent worker exposure to these substances and contamination
of communities that neighbour production facilities."
"The issue of toxicity is overarching. Until the use of toxic
substances is eliminated, it is impossible to secure ‘safe’
recycling," said Greenpeace, explaining why it considered toxic
chemical practice to be more important than recycling practice.
Nokia came behind Sony and Sony Ericsson, though it would have
topped the poll had it not had a penalty point deducted for its
unsatisfactory take-back procedure in India.
Nintendo scored just 0.8 out of 10, up from 0.3 in the last
report and zero last December. Microsoft was second last with a
score of 2.2.
Even the most successful companies on the scorecard received a
withering analysis from Greenpeace.
"Sony Ericsson is in pole position despite barely scraping past
the halfway mark with 5.1 [out of ten]," said the report. "It is
the first company to score almost top marks on the chemicals
criteria, missing this target by having unreasonably high threshold
limits for brominated flame retardants in products that are
allegedly BFR-free."
"The company scores relatively high on energy criteria because
all of its products meet and exceed the Energy Star standard," it
said. "On all other energy issues, it scores badly. Sony Ericsson
falls down on e-waste issues scoring badly on all the criteria. It
reports a pitiful recycling rate of 1%–13%."
Apple came in the middle of the rankings with a score of 4.1,
but that was a significant fall from its 6.7 score in spring. In
2007 Apple announced a programme to make Apple more environmentally
friendly, including attempts to eliminate toxic chemicals such as
Mercury.
"Apple scores poorly on most e-waste criteria, except for
reporting a recycling rate in 2006 of 9.5% as a percentage of sales
7 years ago," said the report. "It does only slightly better on
energy criteria, failing to score on all criteria except energy
efficiency of products."
Nintendo's 0.8 out of ten was described in the report as
"pitiful", and the company has clearly struggled to meet its
environmental pledges while coping with the enormous success of its
Wii games console.
"Nintendo discloses carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from its own
operations and commits to cutting CO2 emissions and other
greenhouse gases by 2% over each previous year," said the report.
"However, Nintendo admits that an increase in business led to a 6%
rise in CO2 emissions in 2006."
