It's Not Easy Buying Green

Consumers Come Second

Another reason for the seeming dearth of green electronics is that most consumer products aren't being marketed on the basis of their environmental awareness. In fact, in the United States, you'd be hard-pressed to find any explicit mention of eco-friendliness in the packaging of computers and peripherals. But that doesn't mean it's not there. Apple's environmental Web page lists the toxic materials banned from its products and its compliance with strict energy regulations, though you might not realize it while shopping. (The Apple Store employee we asked about them was similarly unaware of these policies.) Apple does, however, put Energy Star logos on its packaging. (Energy Star is a government program that recognizes products that meet certain energy efficiency standards by permitting such products to display the Energy Star logo on their packaging.)

Ironically, companies are touting their environmental advantages to big business, which must deal with increased energy costs and with government regulations that relating to harmful substances.

For example, a U.S. government mandate requires that federal agencies improve their energy efficiency and buy green electronics products to supply 95 percent their needs. The green products must be registered with the Electronic Products Environmental Assessment Tool (EPEAT), whose searchable database system ranks 426 desktop PCs, laptops, and monitors based on their compliance to criteria defined in the IEEE 1680 specification on environmental performance.

These institutional purchasers, with big contracts and deep products, are pressuring computer manufacturers who want their business to take environmentalism into account. (Hewlett-Packard, for example, says that it offers IT products that have a reduced environmental impact. HP's ScanJet 5590 scanner uses postconsumer plastic--25 percent from old print cartridges and 75 percent from beverage bottles.)

"It's spelled out in black-and-white what they're looking for next to a pile of money," says Scott Case, the outreach director at the Green Electronics Council, which runs EPEAT. "The consumer doesn't have a crystal-clear mechanism to voice their environmental interest."