RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, N.C. — You know it's mid-April when every other email you receive is focused on Earth Day-related announcements. Many are silly, some are just plain confusing, but a small number offer interesting nuggets of new information.


That's the case with an announcement today from Lenovo, which serves primarily as an overview of its green practices. But within that announcement comes the news that, based on data gathered by EPEAT during its green IT certification process, Lenovo uses almost 100 percent more recycled plastic polymers in some of its computers than the company in second place.

Lenovo's ThinkCentre desktops, for example, use 27 percent post-consumer recycled polymers, and its ThinkStation D20 contains 30 percent post-consumer content. That's compared to 15 percent recycled polymers in other companies' machines.

"The EPEAT system specifically rewards the use of post-consumer content because reusing materials from recycled products creates more environmental benefit than reusing post-industrial content," Jeff Omelchuck, the executive director of EPEAT, said in a statement. "With Earth Day approaching, we congratulate Lenovo for their aggressive efforts, setting the bar high for the industry by using groundbreaking levels of post-consumer plastics."

Lenovo said that in 2008 alone it used more than 2.2 million pounds of post-consumer plastics in its PCs.

Also notable in Lenovo's announcement was its program to offer bulk, bundled packaging for companies that buy large quantities of computers. This type of packaging can save up to four pounds of packaging materials per computer, which can make a big difference in achieving Lenovo's goals of cutting its packaging consumption by 750 tons per year.

2008 was a busy year for Lenovo on the green front: in March, the company launched a line of EPEAT-certified monitors, in September Lenovo joined The Climate Group and unveiled renewable energy e-coupons, and in November the company boosted its takeback program for European customers, making it easier for companies to return lightly used machines for a portion of their value.