Toxic Tech: Greenpeace Speaks

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And given the apparent lack of strong consumer demand (BusinessWeek.com, 9/10/07) for eco-friendly products when buying computers and electronics, a manufacturer's production costs still tend to count for more than its green bona fides at the cash register. "The bottom line is, [consumers] are quite cynical about it," says Roger Kay, president of industry researcher Endpoint Technologies Associates. "Everybody is hopping aboard the 'We've got to be green' train, and there's a lot of lip service."

Kay puts vendors' eco-friendly initiatives into three categories. Some manufacturing changes, such as replacing a harmful material with a nature-friendlier one that costs less, are "no-brainers," he says. Then there's commonsense global compliance with stringent local regulations in places such as Germany and Scandinavia. Such moves can prove cost-effective for large PC makers such as Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) by reducing the need to produce different products for different markets. Last, there are "feel-good" efforts, such as PC maker Dell's (DELL) offer to plant trees for buyers of its PCs to help offset the carbon dioxide emissions of those products. "That's the category that's squishiest," says Kay.

Costly Changes

Greenpeace gave Dell a strong 7.3 rating, citing the company's pledge to stop using brominated flame retardants and polyvinyl chloride by 2009, as well as its aggressive recycling program. It gave HP a 6.7 rating for its pledge to eliminate the chemicals from computers—but not all its products—by 2009.

Whether companies are cleaning up their acts to get ahead of tough regulations or for better public relations, such efforts are very expensive. On Nov. 11, Intel said its new 45-nanometer chips eliminate the use of lead and will soon exclude halogens, a class of materials that includes brominated flame retardants soon to be prohibited by EU regulations. Intel's efforts to stop using lead alone has spanned hundreds of engineers' time over five years, according to Stangis. "It's definitely more expensive," he says.

Greenpeace's quarterly pounding on the electronics industry's biggest companies has no doubt raised consumers' awareness of what's in their gear. What's less clear is how eco-savvy shoppers will navigate the thicket of pronouncements and criticisms coming from both sides.

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Ricadela is a writer for BusinessWeek.com in Silicon Valley.