GREEN LAPTOPS

Ragunathan.R

Srividhya.C

Laptop Brands

The laptop brands considered for comparison are as follows:

· Acer

· Dell

· HP

· Lenovo

· Toshiba

Methodology

• Even though there are various laptop brands available in the market, we have chosen those brands that have laptops as their core business.

• The maximum points for each criterion are 10. Points are awarded based on the available information.

• The information considered for comparison has been taken from the respective company’s official website and the latest reports that have been released so far.

• The final ratings and rankings given by us are subject to change every year based on the performance of the companies and their commitment towards the environment.

Criteria

The following are the various parameters/criteria that we have chosen, to evaluate the social responsibility of the brand.

• Green Reports

• Contribution to Community

• Energy Efficiency

• Clean Electricity

• Extended Producer Responsibility

• GHG Emissions – External Disclosure of Information

• GHG Emissions – Reductions and Targets

• Reduction of Hazardous Materials

• Reduction in Supply Chain Consumption

• Availability of Information to End users

Green Reports

Green reports include reports on the Corporate Social Responsibility activities of the companies and their actions towards sustainability of the company as well as the environment. Not all companies publish such reports on their corporate social responsibility activities. Publishing such reports enables us to know the efforts taken by the company to contribute towards a greener earth. Hence, we considered this as one of the criterion and awarded points to the brands with respect to the availability of the reports and the frequency of periodic updates from the company.

· Dell, Lenovo & Toshiba have been consistent in updating their reports.

· Toshiba has been releasing two reports on its environment activities.

· Acer publishes corporate sustainability report and HP publishes the Global Citizenship Report, but the latest publication of both was in 2010. The other brands have reports which have been published in 2011. Even though HP’s report is last published in 2010, it has projections for the upcoming years in it.

Contributions to Community

The following table shows the contributions made by the companies for the community.

Dell and HP had provided the information in their Green Reports, whereas Lenovo had given it in its official website. Acer’s contribution was calculated with the given data provided in its Green Report and Toshiba’s data was unavailable. It was mentioned that Toshiba was planning to contribute 1billion yen for the community, but there was no information as to whether it has contributed or not.

Energy Efficiency

This criteria deal with how energy efficient the products are when compared to the products of the other companies in the same range.

· Acer – more than 60% of the laptop varieties are given Energy star 5.0 rating. But, there is no innovation made to improve the capacity of the product in real time, where the details are with respect to ideal system only.

· Dell – it claims to be 96% efficient in its corporate responsibility report, but it is comparing its performance with its own performance of the year 2008 and not with any industry benchmark.

· HP – provides carbon calculator for all its products, but fails to be transparent in giving the percentage of efficiency of the product in using energy.

· Lenovo – provides a power management tool and energy calculator. The details regarding the efficiency of the range of products are limited to approximations only and so, not valid to full extent.

· Toshiba – no up to date information on efficiency is given and the information available is also not specific to a single laptop, but only common for the entire range of products.

Clean Electricity

This criterion considers how different brands use renewable energy sources for electricity consumption.

· Acer - There are no goals or targets with respect to Clean Electricity. It is just planning to assess the feasibility of investing in projects to generate renewable energy to offset future emissions. Acer pledged a 5% reduction in electricity consumption in 3 years, as part of voluntary carbon reduction plan.

· Dell - Over the last four years, Dell has completed more than 170 efficiency improvement projects and 21% of electricity purchased at global level was from green sources.

· HP – It purchased 311 million kwh of renewable energy worldwide in the year 2010. HP already met its goal of doubling the purchase of renewable energy to 8% of electricity use by 2012.

· Lenovo – It involved in energy efficient products that led to a 20% reduction in electricity consumption from 2009 to 2011.

· Toshiba - has used a green power system since 2005. It has also entered into an agreement to purchase 2 million kilowatts of electricity under a green power certificate every year. Toshiba also aims to use renewable energy for a wider range of its operations, but has not set a target.

Extended Producer Responsibility

This criteria deal with the extent the companies are involved in taking responsibility of the products even if there are no laws pertaining to it.

· Acer – it gives vague information on recycling products in Indonesia, that too only in its CSR report but not in its website regarding how it is recycling.

· Dell – Electronics Take Back Coalition ranks Dell, the highest in the market for recycling in 69 countries out of 78 countries where it has direct operations. But, dell is not giving the recycling data in percentage of sales.

· HP – even though it is involved in e-waste recycling, HP restricts its action only to its business customers and not to individuals.

· Lenovo – the company is involved in recycling of products in 51 countries where it has operations, and it considers both business and individual customers.

· Toshiba – even though there is no track record with reference to laptops in specific, the company recycled up to 80% of its sales in certain countries.

GHG Reductions – External Disclosure of Information and Reductions & Targets

The details regarding the reduction in Green House Gas (GHG) emission with respect to the previous year and the ability to achieve the previous year target on emission control, in the company green reports, has been considered for comparison.

· Acer – the emission details are given in their reports but have not been verified by any. The targeted reduction for 2009, 2008 was not achieved.

· Dell – the emission details are given in their reports with split up of the contributions in detail. The targeted emission reduction was not achieved, only because of the series of acquisitions. The company mentioned this in its report and informed that it’ll formulate a new target for the upcoming years.

· HP – the emission details are given in the reports and information was verified by external agencies for authentication. The data given is with reference to the GHG protocol. Due to acquisitions, the target was not achieved; even then they were able to reduce significant emissions.

· Lenovo – the emission details are verified according to ISO 14064 for the first time. The target was not met, but to compensate, it purchased carbon offset. And, there was no target information on increasing renewable energy sources.

· Toshiba – the emission details are verified by ISO standards but the underlying information is not provided. Even though the targets are met, it is not with market standards. Because, the company is using reference of 1990 emission data and framing targets.

Reduction of Hazardous Materials

This criteria deal with the year on year reduction of hazardous materials in the production of the product in comparison with the market players.

· Acer – it started reducing the usage of PVC and promised to produce PVC free products of all range by the end of 2012.

· Dell – it gave PVC free products in mobile phone and desktop range of products and promised to produce mercury free displays for laptops by end of 2012.

· HP – it gave 100% BFR and PVC free notebooks by 2010, and promised to produce mercury free displays sooner.

· Lenovo – the company shifted the time line to provide BFR and PVC free products from 2009 – 2011 and now it is considering to shift target further to the new product launches and not the existing product line.

· Toshiba – it has not achieved the BFR free time line (of 2009) yet. It announced to align the target to 2015.

Reduction in Supply Chain Energy Consumption

This criteria deal with the actions taken to reduce the actual energy consumption in the supply chain of the respective companies, year on year.

· Acer - it is disclosing the GHG emissions of only a few of its suppliers, and hence there is a chance of significant change in the measurement.

· Dell – even though it is tracking the supply chain GHG emissions it has not published any till date in any of the reports or in its website.

· HP – working with Electronics Industry Citizenship Coalition (EICC) to develop a tool for the suppliers to calculate the GHG emissions, it also has maintained the supplier emission for two years and not affected with increase in production.

· Lenovo – it is still in the stage of planning programs to reduce the emission by the supplier

· Toshiba – the company fails to give enough information on GHG contributions with respect to the lifecycle of the product.

Availability of Information to End Users

Some companies do not disclose all information to the general public or the end user on their official websites. Thus, this parameter has been taken into consideration and is limited to the information available on the official website of the respective brands.

· Both Lenovo and HP maintain more user friendly web pages, giving enough information to reflect their environment sustaining activities.

· Toshiba and Dell also have a dedicated webpage for information about the company activities, but the information is not detailed as compared to Lenovo and HP.

· Acer does not provide adequate information compared to the other brands and the reports have not been updated.

Consolidated Scores

Green Ranking

Recommendation

Based on the selected parameters and on the available information, the brand HP is found to be the most socially responsible brand. We thus recommend you to select HP the next time you decide to purchase a laptop.

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Monday, 9 April 2012