Consumers are asked to “go green” just about every day. Whether it’s watching commercials for environmentally friendly cars and cleaning products or seeing reusable totes line grocery store aisles, students are not strangers to the message. And Greenpeace wants this kind of green mentality to reach consumers when they think about purchasing the latest gadgets.

Greenpeace recently released its first 2010 edition of the “Guide to Greener Electronics.” The guide, which was first released in August 2006, comes out every few months and ranks top manufacturing companies based on environmental practices. This includes proper handling of chemicals and energy efficiency of products.

For students who are green at heart and looking for more ways to clean up their act, the sidebar shows how the top five companies earned recognition for being environmentally friendly.

Greenpeace’s Demands

Greenpeace calls on the companies to meet three main demands. According to greenpeace,org, electronic manufacturers should:

1. Clean up their products by eliminating hazardous substances.

2. Take back and recycle their products responsibly once they become obsolete.

3. Reduce the climate impacts of their operations and products.

By encouraging companies to take back older products and recycle them, Greenpeace aims to reduce what’s often referred to as eWaste, or electronic waste. Electronic waste, according to the Greenpeace website, is often improperly discarded and exported to third world countries where eWaste yards have been established for the convenient dumping of products from developed countries.

E-Waste Program

The University has its own program to reduce the widespread problem of electronic waste. Karen Nicholas, communications coordinator with information technology, said the University’s eWaste program had received more than 250 requests for recycling eWaste since it began service in July. Before this option was available each department was responsible for the disposal of its own electronics.

Nicholas said the program came about because many departments around campus had requested a service such as this.

“In addition to the environmental benefit of recycling these items, Information Technology can ensure that the items are securely wiped of their KU data and content prior to being recycled,” she said in an e-mail.

It’s free to recycle most products, but there is a recycling fee of $5 for certain computer monitors and a fee of $15 for TVs.

The program will accept and recycle electronics including servers, desktops, workstations, thumb drives, cell phones, tapes, printers, monitors, telephones, network gear and more.

Electronics at KU

Barry Swanson, director of purchasing and strategic sourcing with the University’s purchasing department, said the University looked into many aspects of electronic manufacturers when deciding what companies to purchase from.

Although he said decisions were currently made mostly based on price and company service, the environment was playing an increasingly important role in those decisions. Although the environmental friendliness of electronic companies was not currently an official review criteria for the purchasing department, he said he wouldn’t be surprised if that didn’t change at some point.

“We do buy all the equipment with energy star rates, and certainly the green movement that’s on-going, that’s a factor,” Swanson said.

He said that in the past seven or eight years, the University purchased mostly Dell computers, which placed 14th out of the 18 companies Greenpeace ranked in its guide.

Zack McDougall, buyer and staff supervisor for the Tech Shop in the KU Bookstore, said the Tech Shop sold mostly Apple, Dell and HP computers, which are ranked 5th, 14th and 11th, respectively.

“They’re the top three notebook manufacturers in the U.S. right now,” McDougall said. “Chances are, if you’re going to buy a computer, it’s going to be from one of those three brands.”

He said the Tech Shop sold products from eight of the 18 manufacturers that Greenpeace ranked.

“We do everything we can to make sure we’re carrying an expansive collection of green and greener items from every brand we stock,” he said.

— — Edited by Taylor Bern