Greenpeace Ranks Eco-Friendliness of Electronics Manufacturers; Nintendo Dead Last

Thursday, July 17, 2008 by: David Gutierrez, staff writer
Tags: consumer electronics, health news, Natural News

(NaturalNews) In the most recent version of the Greenpeace Guide to Consumer Electronics, Nintendo became the first brand to ever score a zero out of 10 possible points.

In the quarterly report, Greenpeace ranks a variety of electronics manufacturers on the extent to which they have eliminated toxic materials from their products (five categories) and on the nature of their product takeback and recycling policies (four categories).

The current report was the first to include video game and television manufacturers, bringing the total number of companies ranked to 18. Nintendo joined two other industry leaders at the bottom of the list, with Phillips and Microsoft coming in 17th and 16th with scores of 2.0 and 2.7, respectively. The companies were penalized for having poor or nonexistent timelines for removing toxic ingredients, and for poor takeback and recycling policies. Panasonic, Motorola and Sharp also scored five points or fewer.

All information used to calculate scores was based on information publicly available on company web sites. Nintendo's score of zero resulted, in large part, due to a simple absence of information about its environmental policies.

Highest scoring were Sony Ericsson and Samsung, tied with 7.7 points each. Sony was commended for eliminating PVCs from recent products and improving its reporting of its takeback practices, but faulted for failing to implement its takeback policies well. Greenpeace noted that Samsung had eliminated "the worst toxic chemicals" from many of its products, "but falls down on takeback practice."

Greenpeace noted that the purpose of the guide is to spur companies to improve their waste reduction and recycling policies, but that a high score does not necessarily mean an environmentally or socially friendly product.

"The guide does not rank companies on labor standards, energy use or any other issues, but recognizes that these are important in the production and use of electronics products," the organization said.