Greenpeace International has weighed in on mobile handset vendors’ friendliness to the environment, based on their use of toxic chemicals in manufacturing and their e-waste policies such as take backs and recycling.
Overall, Greenpeace doesn’t like what it sees, but pledges to complete such a report card on a quarterly basis to reflect renewed efforts by the players. With an average score of four out of 10 possible points, the electronics industry as a whole has a long way to go to claim it’s a “green industry,” the Greenpeace report said.
The organization said it based its findings on publicly available information. The report included consumer electronics firms with mobile-phone makers.
In the first such ranking, Nokia Corp. got a very restrained pat on the back-“a barely respectable score,” in Greenpeace’s words-while rival Motorola Inc. received a low rating for allegedly going back on its pledge to remove toxic chemicals from its phones. Motorola responded that it would review the report and that it didn’t believe its environmental policies and practices were fairly represented.
Nokia is cited positively for removing polyvinyl (PVC) from phones shipped beginning in 2005, and eliminating brominated fire retardants (BFRs) from all new components by 2007. Nokia’s policy is to facilitate the take-back and reuse or recycling of its own brand of discarded products.
Nokia received a score of 7, Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications got a 5.3, Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. received a 5.0, LG Electronics Co. Ltd. got a 4.3 score and Motorola received a 1.7 score.
Motorola was counted down for allegedly backtracking on an October 2005 pledge to phase out BFRs by 2007 and provide a phase-out date for PVC by March 2006. In May, Motorola told Greenpeace it could not phase out the two substances from its handsets.
In a statement last week, Motorola said:
“Motorola’s policy is to meet or exceed all applicable environmental, health, safety, legal and other requirements in the countries in which we do business. We believe the (Greenpeace) evaluation provides an incomplete picture of the company’s true environmental performance. We will review the report and its methodology in detail to assess what actions may be appropriate.”
