Enterprise Vendors Flounder In Green IT Ranking

Some of the biggest enterprise IT vendors appeared at the bottom of the long-running league table last week, ranking firms on their environmental record.

Only games vendor, Nintendo could do worse than Dell, HP, Microsoft, Lenovo and Fujitsu respectively in the quarterly “Guide to Greener Electronics” compiled by Greenpeace.

This quarter’s results were compiled by scoring each IT company on its progress in implementing green manufacturing practices and marketing policies. But, interestingly, it also penalised firms for so-called “greenwash”.

As a result, the PC makers, HP, Dell and Lenovo all again suffered as a result of not delivering on promises to eliminate polyvinyl chloride (PVC) and brominated flame retardants (BFRs) from their kit by the end of 2009.

And Microsoft dropped down the rankings because an e-waste policy the report described as “poor”.

But even Nokia who came in at the top spot was cautioned for only having a “poor” recycling rate of three to five percent. It nevertheless was awarded top spot for its toxic component elimination programme and phone recycling collection points.

In fact, mobile phone companies seemed ahead of their tin-shifting counterparts overall this quarter, as Samsung for its PVC-free LCD TVs in particular, Sony Ericsson, LG Electronics and Motorola followed Nokia at the top of the ranking.

Only Toshiba, Phillips and Sharp could hold their own against the mobile manufacturers in the top half of the ranking.

Apple, which has often come in for the most amount of criticism from the environmental pressure group fell from ninth place to 11th this quarter because it used “unreasonably high threshold limits for BFRs and PVC in products that are allegedly PVC-/BFR-free”.