Comments on: ASK INHABITAT: Which gadgets are the greenest?

By: minxlj

minxlj — Thu, 17 May 2007 08:36:50 +0000

I’m surprised no-one has posted a link to Apple’s recent statement on green policy:

http://www.apple.com/hotnews/agreenerapple/

It’s a good read.

Btw Vance, I don’t agree that using AA batteries is as ‘green a gadget as they come’. AA batteries are terrible! But I guess we’re long way off of the wind-up version of the Neo ;-)

I’m hoping more attachments come out for the Solio solar charger: http://www.solio.com – I can already use this to charge most of my gadgets and accessories, it’s brilliant.

By: Vance

Vance — Fri, 02 Mar 2007 06:32:26 +0000

An AlphaSmart Neo is about as green a gadget as they come. 700 hours of use on 3 AA batteries.

Only for writers, though. No web or anything like that.

(Looks good in red, too: http://www.vancefry.com/projects/red-neo )

By: Jay Illingworth

Jay Illingworth — Fri, 09 Feb 2007 17:34:18 +0000

You should dig a little deeper, and find out about Green peace’s methodology – I understand that their research is based upon the environmental information on electronics companies web sites – hardly a thorough review of their true environmental efforts.

In addition, you should know that here in Canada, 21 of the world’s leading electronics manufacturers have recently released, “Designing for the Environment”, profiling the efforts of these companies (including Apple) to improve their environmental footprint in areas such as chemical management and energy efficiency. These improvements show a responsible industry responding to consumer demands. The report is available here: http://www.epsc.ca/dfe

By: Chris

Chris — Tue, 30 Jan 2007 22:10:06 +0000

Kyle – Actually Dell’s program only covers the carbon produced by powering your PC for three years. It does not cover the carbon produced by the manufacture of your PC, which by some accounts is greater than the amount created to power your PC for three years.

By: Stiven (sustainableday)

Stiven (sustainableday) — Tue, 30 Jan 2007 19:33:54 +0000

With that said, we need a more comprehensive sistem to measure how green an electronic device may be. It is true that the EPEAT system is better than the Greenpiece sytems because it is more holistic but it is in no way a complete measure of a products impact. In the case of the Apple titanium cased notebooks it is clear that there are better and more responsable material choices than titaneum but yet this is not measured into the equation…

In genereal these tools don’t provide a holistic measure of all the variables involved in determining a products impact. For this to be more accurate we need to measure these products in an equation that takes into account the context of the whole sytem they are a part of .

By: Ron

Ron — Tue, 30 Jan 2007 00:16:53 +0000

The instructor at an energy seminar I recently attended mentioned he had visited a local electronics store and, with the store manager’s approval, plugged a number of their TV’s into a device he had to measure the amount of juice they pulled while off. The numbers were all over the board, some as high as 40 watts. Almost as alarming, that little piece of information was not available in the documentation. The power strip is a great idea but, man, what a hassle if the unit your controling has a clock. And doesn’t everything these days. Thanks for the info, Jennifer.

By: Kyle Jones

Kyle Jones — Sun, 28 Jan 2007 18:20:05 +0000

I’m not sure on manufacturing, but I was recently pricing Dell notebooks out and I found that for a couple of bucks they will plant a tree to help counter the CO2 emissions from the creation of your notebook. Pretty cool, eh?

By: phil

phil — Sun, 28 Jan 2007 14:03:13 +0000

“Greenpeace does not evaluate products for energy consumption during usage, which has the greatest impact on a computer’s overall environmental footprint.”

not sure about this…the chemicals involved in electronics manufacture are among the most toxic KNOWN.

By: FM

FM — Sun, 28 Jan 2007 11:59:26 +0000

Hey & Thanks. A lot of handy info here, it’s a pity that a lot of products we use daily have yet to be “greened”. I suppose that time will tell, though. Until then we consumers have only to support the companies that take steps in the right direction in order to help the transition to a more sustainable culture.

Oh and, EPEAT is a really nice resource!
-FM

By: Peggy Farabaugh

Peggy Farabaugh — Sat, 27 Jan 2007 21:42:57 +0000

Thank you Jennifer. We feel vindicated after spending hours researching this issue ;o) Your information and links are very helpful… just what we were looking for.

Ken and Peggy Farabaugh