e-waste

With expanded and tougher criteria on toxic chemicals, electronic waste and new criteria on climate change only Sony and Sony Ericsson score more than 5/10 in our latest Guide to Greener Electronics. Nintendo and Microsoft remain rooted to the bottom of the Guide.

The Greener Electronics Guide is our way of getting the electronics industry to face up to the problem of e-waste. We want manufacturers to get rid of harmful chemicals in their products. We want to see an end to the stories of unprotected child labourers scavenging mountains of cast-off gadgets created by society's gizmo-loving ways.

Question: switching from a computer running on Windows to one running on Linux could slash computer-generated e-waste levels by 50 per cent. True or false?

And the answer is (cue long drawn-out tension building drumroll): TRUE!

You might be looking forward to the European launch of Apple's iPhone in November (we were certainly looking forward to the possibility that the iPhone would prove Steve Jobs' newfound commitment to the environment).

Unfortunately, the iPhone's beauty only runs skin deep. A team of scientists got hold of one, dismantled it and uncovered nasty stuff that other phone makers have already stopped using, including two types of hazardous substances:

Our international office has the full story - including a report (pdf) and a slideshow of high quality images.

It's that time again; we've just released our latest quarterly Greener Electronics Guide, which ranks manufacturers on their toxics and recycling policies and practices.

One of the most serious consequences of the dramatic floods which swamped parts of England in recent weeks was the loss of clean drinking water. Even now that the citizens of Tewkesbury have running water once again, it will be a few more days before they can safely start drinking their tap water.

With Blair's recent departure, recollections of 1997 in the media have been dominated by two things: his ascension to power and the Spice Girls. On the other side of the world in China, that same year was important for a couple of other reasons. Most famously, the lease ran out on a small but strategic piece of land called Hong Kong and the British Empire lost one of its last outposts as ownership return to the People's Republic of China.

But on that same piece of land, about the same time Chris Patten was bidding a teary farewell, something else significant happened (at least, we like to think it was) - Greenpeace China opened its doors. The importance of this particular office to the organisation can't be underestimated and, as this video shows, many of our campaigns can't help but take China's astonishing economic and social development into account. And with China now possibly the world's biggest emitter of carbon dioxide, the next ten years are going to be even busier over there.