Nokia, Sony Ericsson Retain Top Spots in Green Electronics Guide

Some of the top electronics companies saw their scores drop in the latest Greenpeace Guide to Greener Electronics due to missing goals for eliminating chemicals and not taking a stance on proposed revisions to the European Union's law on chemicals in electronics.

Unveiled in conjunction with the start of the 2010 Consumer Electronics Show, the 14th version of Greenpeace's guide has added a new rating criteria: Support for revisions to the Restriction of Hazardous Substances (RoHS) Directive that would ban PVC vinyl plastic, brominated flame retardants (BFRs) and chlorinated flame retardants from electronics.

Sony Ericsson and Apple have shown support for such a ban, but others like Nokia, HP, and Dell were docked points for not lobbying in favor of the ban.

Other companies lost points and dropped down in the rankings for not meeting chemical-elimination goals. Samsung, Dell, Lenovo and LG Electronics are all in that camp for not meeting goals to phase-out PVC and BFRs by the end of last year. Most have set new goals to eliminate the chemicals by 2011 or later.

Nokia retains its first-place position from the previous guide with a score of 7.3 out of 10.

Sony Ericsson moves up to the second place as the only company to earn top marks for all chemical criteria. The previous second-place holder, Samsung, dropped down to seventh place for not removing BFRs from all of its products as it had planned.

Apple jumped up from ninth place to fifth due to its support of RoHS revisions, making all of its products free of PVC and BFRs, and expanding product take-back programs around the world.

The full rankings are:

1. Nokia
2. Sony Ericsson
3. Toshiba
4. Phillips
5. Apple
6. LG Electronics
7. Sony
8. Motorola
9. Samsung
10. Panasonic
11. HP
12. Acer
13. Sharp
14. Dell
15. Fujitsu
16. Lenovo
17. Microsoft
18. Nintendo