Greenpeace has accused the U.S. green IT labelling registry EPEAT of "caving in" to pressure from leading manufacturers and approving a number of "ultra-thin" notebooks that will prove difficult to recycle.
EPEAT announced last week that it had undertaken a thorough review of five different "ultra-thin" notebooks from Apple, Lenovo, Samsung and Toshiba, including the new MacBook Pro with Retina Display, and concluded they could remain on the EPEAT registry.
"EPEAT is committed to foster greener electronics and to give purchasers the tools to evaluate green claims," said Robert Frisbee, chief executive of EPEAT in a statement.
"The system's rigorous environmental assessment processes result from a powerful stakeholder collaboration that includes purchasers, environmental advocates, government, manufacturer, recycler and academic participants. This latest series of stringent investigations demonstrates the power of that approach."
The organization said that it had undertaken a series of "fundamental inquiries" into the products and referred them to its independent Product Verification Committee (PVC) to see if they met the criteria set out for EPEAT-approved products.
It also confirmed that the PVC had undertaken a series of technical tests and concluded that the products met a range of criteria requiring them to be easy to disassemble or upgrade.
"EPEAT requested standard disassembly instructions from each manufacturer for the products in question, then commissioned a technical test lab to independently purchase these devices on the open market, and disassemble them according to the instructions provided," the organization said. "Lab personnel were not trained recycling professionals, so they could be expected to provide more universally applicable data regarding questions of time and ease of disassembly than would a demonstration by a recycler.
"The lab disassembled each of the purchased products with full documentation of each disassembly process, including its overall duration. Time for total disassembly of each of the products was under 20 minutes in all cases; for the removal of batteries the time required was between 30 seconds and two minutes."
The rulings are significant as growing numbers of public sector and corporate customers adhere to green IT procurement criteria that mean they will only buy EPEAT-registered products.
The decision follows a row this summer after Apple announced it was withdrawing its products from the EPEAT registry, only to reverse its decision following protests from customers.
However, Greenpeace IT analyst Casey Harrell responded angrily to the news, accusing EPEAT of approving difficult to recycle products that will lead to "less recycling and more e-waste".
"Apple wanted to change the EPEAT standards when it knew its MacBook Pro with Retina Display would likely not qualify for the registry in July of this year – now EPEAT has reinterpreted its rules to include the MacBook Pro and ultrabooks. Is it a coincidence?" he asked.
"It's unclear why EPEAT caved in, but the impact is that EPEAT has confused consumers and businesses who want to buy green electronics that can be repaired and will last a long time, and sets a dangerous trend for the burgeoning market of ultrabooks."
He added that EPEAT's argument that the new products meet their criteria fails to take account of the way in which the vast majority of consumers are unwilling to remove components from their gadgets.
"Consumers will not risk violating their product warranty to change a battery using instructions they don't have with tools they don't own, and are sure to conclude that the entire process is too complicated and instead buy a new product," he said. "The result will be electronics with a shorter lifespan and more e-waste.
"Electronics need to be designed so that people can upgrade and repair them as easily as possible. If companies can't make products that can be easily fixed, they shouldn't be sold."
This article first appeared on BusinessGreen and is reprinted with permission.
Image of used computer parts by Sharon Day available via Shutterstock.
Short answer - No. Longer
Short answer - No.
Longer answer:
As a standards-based system, EPEAT verifies products against a specific set of criteria and requirements. The criteria involved in the recent verification are contained in IEEE standard 1680.1, developed in an open public process and slated to be revised on a regular basis. They lay out very specific requirements that we cannot alter – either to make things easier or more challenging - as we review products’ conformance to the standard.
To clarify a few points:
•With regard to upgrade capabiliity - the current standard explicitly allows for upgrade through a high performance serial bus or Universal Serial Bus (USB). Reasonable people may agree or disagree with this - and stakeholders may want to change it going forward. But that’s the explicit language of the standard - and so that’s what we verify to.
• The disassembly criteria investigated are in the section of the standard entitled “Design for recovery through recycling systems that utilize shredding” – they are self-evidently not addressing disassembly for upgrade. In addition, the criteria are performance based – if the product can be easily disassembled, it passes. The standard is completely silent on whether use of adhesives – or any other specific construction method – is acceptable or unacceptable. The test lab in this case found that the products could in fact be easily disassembled. (Just to be clear - that easy disassembly might also enable upgrades/replacements- that’s just not the issue these criteria address.)
• Finally, EPEAT staff and administration are not involved in conducting or deciding the outcomes of our Verification processes – we hire independent contractors to perform these functions in order to ensure that there is a firewall between our organization and the judgments rendered.
As stakeholders move to update the PC/Display criteria, we expect that they will address some features of the current criteria that are unclear or outdated. We encourage interested people to be a part of that process by joining the IEEE 1680.1 update work group or providing comments on standards drafts as they move forward. And when the revised standard is available, we will continue to hold manufacturers accountable as they declare their products against the new criteria.
Greenpeace should 1) shut up,
Greenpeace should 1) shut up, and 2) develop its own green registry process if it doesn't like what EPEAT is doing. It's far too easy to sit on the sidelines and complain when you really don't have a practical solution to a perceived problem.