A report just released has shown the attendees here at the CES 2011 that the consumer electronics industry is making huge progress in its attempts to be become more environmentally friendly.
The report by the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) goes by the name of the CEA 2010 Sustainability Report. It is an industry update which first came out in 2008 and which lets us know what is being done to make the manufacturing and distribution of our gadgets greener.
These are a few of the key points:
- The electronics industry has a system known as the Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool (EPEAT) which allows firms to register if they meet certain key criteria which guarantees the environmental friendliness of their products. The last reported year – 2009 – saw a 10% rise in the sale of registered US products. This means 48.5 million green electronic products were sold in 2009 in the States.
- A lot of firms are reporting that they have switched over to using renewable materials in their designs and a more sustainable approach to packaging too. One of the 21 case studies which the report looks at is of a video service firm which reduced its use of non green material such as cardboard by 75% in 2009 and will use only fully recyclable material from this current year onwards.
- There has been a very healthy rise in the number of energy efficient products on sale. The Energy Star criteria gives the guidelines here and there are now 27,000 products which meet it. The tough guidelines now mean that to quality a product has to save over 20% of the energy of a standard model, and in some case the saving is over 50%.
The advent of greener gadgets is something which I am sure we would all like to see, and the industry is to be applauded for making significant progress on this matter. Can they keep it going and really make us proud to use environmentally friendly products?
Source:CEA
