My colleague Susanna and I went to London Green IT Expo, which took place on November 10-11th. We had expected to see some interesting innovations and hear some good discussions regarding green IT.
To some extend our expectations were met:  There were a lot about energy efficiency and efforts to increase the carbon foot print.

But there were surprisingly very little about e-waste and recycling of ICT-products at Green IT Expo.
Research director Andy Lawrence from The 451 Group, held a presentation about the coming trends within green IT for the next five years.  All of the trends he presented were about energy efficiency and none about how the industry and the users should act on decreasing the problems with e-waste.
But there was one exception: Catalina McGregor from Green ICT Delivery, HM Government’s CIO/CTO Council held an interesting presentation on the topic: Dirty ICT: What it is? And How Do You Clean Up Your Act. Ms McGregor showed some videoclips from Greenpeace that illustrated the huge problems e-waste from the so called developed countries are dumping in the third world. See video from Greenpeace:  one from India and one from Ghana

The messages from these films are that the best way to decrease the problems with hazardous substanses from e-waste is to don’t have these substances in the ICT products at all. TCO Certified is working in this direction by having criteria on  minimized levels of hazardous substances and that the products must be repaired for recycling.  The goal is to ban all hazardous substances. Another thing you can do to decreasing problems with e-waste is to buy a product with good performance that has a long life time, so you will keep your product longer.

It is definitely time for the richer countries to make some significant efforts when it comes to e-waste.  In 2009 no people in the world should be exposed for hazardous and toxic substances as led, mercury and cadmium etcetera. And it is also about time that e-waste will have a bigger share of the Green IT concept.

If you would like to know more about the e-waste from USA, see this film