Often, advocacy groups campaign against specific business practices --- take the movement to ban BPA from baby bottles, for instance. But when it comes to the electronics industry, non-government organizations are attempting to shift the entire business paradigm. Rather than urging companies to stop using a given substance or stop using a trading partner, green-minded advocacy groups, such as the Green Electronics Council, Electronics Takeback Coalition, the Basel Action Network, or Greenpeace, want the electronics industry to change the way it sources materials, constructs and powers goods --- everything about electronics lifecycle management, from cradle to cradle. And these groups are also working hard to make end users understand that current electronics manufacturing practices are energy-intensive, involve the use of environmentally sensitive materials and need to embrace recycling of e-waste.

How does the work these group do affect IT operations? Will it help enterprises green the data center and desktop computing, or is mere window dressing? Interviews with key players show that the movement clearly helps, although it still has a way to go before it makes a major impact.

Purchasing Power
Back in 2004, a large group of government representatives (including members of the EPA), electronics producers including Nokia, Sharp and Dell, and other stakeholders such as electronics recyclers, convened an effort to establish a national system for managing the reuse, recycling, and disposal of electronics products. While this group, dubbed National Electronic Product Stewardship Initiative (NEPSI), managed to scope out protocols and specifications for e-waste takeback, the initiative never really got off the ground. However, some of those involved in NEPSI went on to work on a second project, called Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool (EPEAT). Thankfully, this one stuck.

While NEPSI could have formed a national e-waste takeback policy, it would not have held up electronics producers to a higher standard when it comes to the materials they use in manufacturing, nor the energy consumption of those goods. But EPEAT --- though it's a voluntary program --- does. What's more, EPEAT, which was developed by Portland, Ore.-based Green Electronics Council and created through an EPA grant, is taking off because it helps end users understand their role in the electronics supply chain and how their dollars help push producers toward making ever-more efficient and environmentally-benign goods that are responsibly recycled.

EPEAT is comprised of a product registry that is designed to help institutional purchasers in the public and private sectors evaluate, compare and select desktop computers, notebook computers and monitors based on their environmental attributes, such as material composition, design and energy efficiency. It categorizes them at three levels: bronze, silver and gold. EPEAT also offers buyers draft wording that they can include in the requests for proposals for new electronics purchases, so that these requests include requirements for EPEAT-certified goods.

But EPEAT has also been a great motivator to urge manufacturers to create more environmentally-sensitive products, since it fosters competition among companies to do so. EPEAT is the implementation of the IEEE 1680 Standard for Environmental Assessment of Personal Computer products (including laptop and desktop computers, and monitors).

The US Federal Government now requires that 95 percent of the computers that government agencies purchase met minimum EPEAT standards, and the states of California and Massachusetts and the city of San Francisco have also passed measures that require EPEAT-compliant computer purchases.

In 2007, after a campaign spearheaded by the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition and a student-led subset of that group, called Toxic Free UC, the University of California decided to incorporate a mandate that desktop computers, laptops, and computer monitors that the University purchases must meet the EPEAT standard at the Bronze level or higher.

Yale and Cornell University have also begun purchasing computers based on EPEAT rating.