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Lenovo Lands First ULE Gold Rating for ThinkPad Laptop

<p>The laptop earned the Sustainable Product Certification from Underwriters Labs for its energy efficiency, reduction in toxic chemicals, and use of recycled materials in its design.</p>

Lenovo's ThinkPad T420 has become the first laptop to earn a Gold-level rating from UL Environment (ULE), the groups announced this week. The laptop earned the rating for its energy efficiency, reduction in toxic chemicals, and use of recycled materials in its design.

“Becoming the first PC-maker with a UL Environment Gold certified laptop reconfirms efforts we’ve made to green our products and advancing sustainability throughout our organization,” Rob Taylor, director of environmental affairs at Lenovo, said in a statement. “Our upcoming products, like the ThinkPad T420, demonstrate that we can make high performance technology that’s environmentally responsible.”

The T420 will be released later this month. The machine meets the new Energy Star 5.0 certification standards for energy efficiency, and is part of Lenovo's Environmentally Conscious Products project. In addition to aiming for the highest levels of energy efficiency, those products are designed to reduce the use of hazardous chemicals as well as boost the use of recycled materials.

The ThinkPad T420 contains more than 10 percent post-consumer recycled content; Lenovo has made its ThinkCentre desktops and ThinkVision monitors with about 65 percent post-consumer recycled content on average.

Lenovo has also begun measuring the carbon footprint of some of its products through Det Norske Veritas, ships products in 100 percent recyclable and recycled packaging, and has created a program to let customers buy products in bulk packaging to eliminate shipping waste.

Companies designing computing products for easy upgrading, disassembly and end-of-life is one of the big trends for the future of green IT, as we reported in our State of Green Business Report, published earlier this month. Also this month, a team of students designed a laptop with recyclability in mind, and Fujitsu touted a mouse that is partially compostable.

Lenovo has posted a video to YouTube that gives an overview of its design process for the ThinkPad T420; that video is posted below.

 

 

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