Apr 17 2009
Lenovo is leading the PC industry in green computing by offering the most PC products that use post-consumer recycled materials. These products also contain a higher percentage of post-consumer recycled content than competitors’ offerings, making them among the most environmentally responsible PCs and monitors on the market today. In 2008, Lenovo used more than 2.2 million pounds of post-consumer recycled plastics in its PCs.
Reusing Materials
EPEAT, the Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool, analyzes electronics on an extensive list of environmental attributes, including the amount of post-consumer recycled content used. Post-consumer materials are plastics obtained from previously used objects such as water bottles, PCs and TVs. Based on EPEAT data, Lenovo offers the most number of EPEAT Gold-rated products overall – a total of 69 products – with those products containing the highest amounts of recycled content. For example, select Lenovo ThinkCentre desktops use up to 27 percent post-consumer recycled polymers, well above the 15 percent offered by other PC makers. Lenovo’s ThinkStation D20 workstation uses nearly 30 percent post consumer content, equivalent to 19 plastic drinking water bottles.
“The EPEAT system specifically rewards the use of post-consumer content because reusing materials from recycled products creates more environmental benefit than reusing post-industrial content,” said Jeff Omelchuck, executive director, EPEAT. “With Earth Day approaching, we congratulate Lenovo for their aggressive efforts, setting the bar high for the industry by using groundbreaking levels of post-consumer plastics.”
Reducing Material Impact
Lenovo has paved the way in energy efficient computing with a broad portfolio of green monitors, including the ThinkVision L2440x wide monitor, which has an LED backlit display that consumes less power than traditional displays, uses 30 percent post-consumer materials and is low halogen. Lenovo also offers a low halogen ThinkPad T400 laptop that uses reduced halogen components such as the touchpad, camera and keyboard.
Because PCs and monitors are a significant source of energy use in an office or home environment, Lenovo offers more than 25 PC products that meet the Energy Star 5.0 criteria. These include the ThinkPad T400, X301 and W700ds laptops and select ThinkCentre M58 and M58p Eco desktops. In June 2008, Lenovo became the first PC maker to offer a full line-up of EPEAT Gold-rated ThinkVision monitors, and in January 2009, all Lenovo ThinkVision monitors met the Energy Star 5.0 criteria, nine months before the standard for monitors takes effect in October 2009. Lenovo monitors use a special reflective polarizer technology to help reuse much of the light that would be lost in a standard LCD monitor, thus achieving adequate brightness while using less energy. If energy efficient monitors were adopted globally today, enough electricity to power approximately 5.33 million households could be saved by 2011.2
“We strive to continually improve our environmental qualifications to help reduce the impact of our products and our operations on the planet,” said Fran O’Sullivan, senior vice president, Think Product Group, Lenovo. “By focusing on how our products are made, how energy efficient they are and recycling options at the end-of-life, our customers can make better choices for their home or business and the environment.”
Lenovo is also reducing packaging materials consumption by up to 750 tons annually. As part of this effort, Lenovo is using up to 100 percent recycled cushioning materials in select ThinkPad laptop, ThinkCentre desktop and ThinkVision monitor packaging. In addition, Lenovo is transitioning the IdeaPad S10e netbook packaging to a smaller, reduced-dye box to help minimize waste.
Lenovo also offers bulk packaging at no cost for customers with large-scale rollouts of laptop or desktop PCs such as universities and large enterprises. Bulk packaging can save up to more than four pounds of materials per PC, so a deployment of 5,000 ThinkCentre desktops, for example, could save nearly 22,000 pounds in materials, a significant waste reduction. To help support customers for making greener PC choices, Lenovo offers an e-coupon program. The company will donate the equivalent cost of powering a laptop for one year to a renewable energy project in the buyer’s home state when the customer redeems a specific e-coupon.
Rewarding Recycling
Lenovo aims to make it easy for customers to recycle their unwanted, end-of-life PCs. The Lenovo eco Take Back Program allows consumers to recycle any Lenovo or IBM product for free and receive money back on any brand of PC that has residual value. For business customers, Lenovo offers Asset Recovery Services (ARS), to provide computer take-back, data destruction, refurbishment and recycling.