Bravo Lenovo !

Tags: All in One, Lenovo, TCO Certified

Lenovo Pushes the Boundaries of Sustainable Design with TCO Certified Green IT Products – Leads PC Makers for Portfolio Breadth of TCO Certified Edge Products

With a growing portfolio of environmentally-responsible PCs, worldwide PC maker Lenovo is widely recognized as a leader in sustainable product design – without compromising user demands for performance and cutting edge features. As verification, Lenovo has chosen the TCO Certified label as an international third party assurance of achievements.  Lenovo is now taking

The Lenovo M90z all in one desktop

its environmental commitment a step further with the recent release of the ThinkCentre M90z all-in-one desktop. TCO awarded the M90z the prestigious new TCO Certified Edge designation for its cutting edge eco- design, particularly by incorporating high amounts of post consumer recycled materials. TCO Certified Edge awards leading products that are pushing the boundaries of sustainability and high performance.

For more, visit our multi-media newsroom.

Minimize the toxic cocktail from your computer

Tags: bio-accumulative, chemical substances, chemicals, cocktail of chemicals, computers, defence of the unborn, dioxins, e-waste, flame retardant, hazardous substances, IT equopment, presticides, recycling, RoHS, stefan Jarl, Submission, TCO label

We are constantly exposed to new chemicals – through the air we breathe, the food we eat, what we drink and through our skin. Young people today have higher concentration of chemicals such as brominated flame retardants than ever before. Studies have shown that newborns have on average around 200 synthetic chemicals in their blood, chemicals like pesticides, dioxins and flame retardants. Levels in our environment, including our food and water, keep on increasing.

No one knows what effect these chemicals have on us, on animals or the environment – especially not in this complicated mix, the “cocktail” of chemicals we are exposed to today. The Swedish film-maker Stefan Jarl recently made a documentary Submission – in defence of the unborn, featuring 23 professors from around the world. In the documentary Jarl seeks to find out just what problems these chemicals can cause, and the lingering effects they can have on unborn children. Have a look at a trailer for this interesting movie here  (the trailer is in English).

IT equipment contains plenty of different hazardous metals, chemicals and materials. Legislation has prohibited a few (the EU RoHS directive for instance) but there is so much more that needs to be done. Tonnes of E-waste are being burned in backyards in China or Africa, polluting both the environment and us – these chemicals are both persistent and bio-accumulative and travel far. One group of substances causing a lot of concerns is the halogenated, specifically the brominated and chlorinated. When the E-waste is burned under insufficient conditions – as a lot of the millions of tonnes of E-waste are today – hazardous dioxins, furans and other chemicals are released. These are then transferred to our food, water and finally, to us.

So what should we do? We can obviously not wait for our legislators to prohibit all potentially harmful substances. When it comes to IT equipment and the chemicals they contain there are several things we can do ourselves.

1. Buy eco labelled products! The TCO certification program prohibited brominated and chlorinated substances and materials and hazardous metals in the certified products 1995 – over 10 years before the European RoHS directive. And we have continuously added and toughened the requirements since then. 
2. Use your vacuum cleaner at home. A lot. It reduces the amount of brominated flame retardants, phthalates and other harmful substances flying around in your home.
3.  Have plenty of green plants at home. They also purify indoor air from harmful chemicals.
4. Leave your old electronics and all other hazardous waste for recycling – it reduces the amount of hazardous chemicals in the community in the long run.

On Sustainable Cities & Towns

Tags: Dunkerque, Exido, Green IT strategies, ICLEI, Sustainable Cities and Towns, Sustainable Cities and Towns Campaign

Dunkerque Grand Littoral, France,  co-organised  with ICLEI Local Government on Sustainability and with Sustainable Cities and Towns Campaign, had the honour of hosting the 6th European Sustainable Cities and Towns conference. For three days, over 1800 mayors. elected officials, techical experts and representatives of EU institutions, national governments, business and NGO´s were present to debate, exchange and challenge ideas and experiences about the sustainable city of the 21 st century. This excellently performed conference, with high service and information contents,  marked an additional step in the concrete mobilisation of local governments and their significant role in the field of sustainable development. Local government have a distinct political will and a territorial commitment that place them in a prime position for a true change of practice. 

TCO Development contributed to the conference by a presentation of a study of how local governments can work with greening their IT, under the title ” Green IT strategies in Swedish local authorities can save up to 700 million Euro per year”. The presentation was based on a recent study of 35 out of 280 Swedish local authorities, performed by Exido, Sweden.

Read more about this interesting conference on www.dunkerque.org
Read about ICLEI on http://iclei.org/;
about Sustainable Cities and Towns Campaign on http://www.sustainable-cities.eu/
Read more about Exido`s work on greening IT in Local Authorities on  http://www.exido.se/GronIT/