With the environment on everyone’s minds these days and the word “green” on everybody’s lips, it’s no surprise that the consumer electronics industry is increasingly focusing on sustainability. Late last year, the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) released Environmental Sustainability and Innovation in the Consumer Electronics Industry, its first-ever consumer electronics environmental sustainability report, which assesses and benchmarks the industry’s use of environmentally friendly practices in the design, manufacture and delivery of its products.
“One of the things we saw in representing our member companies’ interests is that policy makers don’t have a good understanding of what the industry is doing in terms of promoting the eco-friendliness and energy efficiency of its products,” says Parker Brugge, vice president of environmental affairs and industry sustainability for CEA.
The report is designed to help change that perception, but it’s not the only reason CEA conducted the study. It also was created for the industry.
“There’s this notion out there that going green or acting in a sustainable way costs money,” says Brugge. “But there are a number of examples in the report of companies that have figured out a better way to distribute their products or make their products and actually save money. So our goal with the report was not only to educate policy makers, but to educate the industry on best practices and how to go about acting and manufacturing sustainably and being able to really affect the bottom line.”
While CEA wants to help the industry adopt more sustainable practices, it draws the line at legislation aimed at regulating how much energy devices can consume. California is one of several states considering such restrictions, with the California Energy Commission (CEC) proposing to cap energy use for new televisions.
CEA has come out strongly against the proposal, saying it would result in store closings and the loss of retail jobs since most of the televisions on store shelves would have to be pulled. The organization also argues that there are already a number of energy-efficient televisions available. If the state were to cap energy consumption, however, consumers would be forced to buy these models, which are usually more expensive than their less energy-efficient competition.
Brugge points out that proposals such as the one offered by the CEC are based in part on incomplete information.
“We’re trying to educate those policy makers that first of all, understand how much energy these products use, because the folks that advocate for those energy consumption limits tend to overstate the amount of energy that the products use. It’s not really their fault in a lot of cases. If you look at the UL certification for a particular product, it gives the maximum amount of energy that the product can use. So you have the ceiling. But it doesn’t really give a sense of how much energy the product actually uses.”
A new standard released late last year by the International Electrotechnial Commission (IEC) may help matters. IEC 62087:2008, Methods of measurement for the power consumption of audio, video and related equipment, is designed to standardize the measurement of power consumption of devices such as television sets and other video and audio equipment.
The standard has since been incorporated into the Energy Star program as a key testing procedure for the Energy Star 3.0 specification for televisions. Energy Star 3.0, which went into effect November 2008, is much more stringent than the previous specification, and is designed to ensure that televisions that earn the Energy Star label are up to 30 percent more efficient than models that do not meet the specification.
While CEA is a big supporter of the Energy Star program, Brugge says that the focus on sustainability in the consumer electronics industry needs to move beyond questions about energy consumption.
“If we allowed the debate with respect to our products to just focus on how much energy the products use, then I feel that we’ve missed the bigger picture,” he says. “The bigger picture is that, okay, this product uses energy, but it enables you to save energy by not getting in your car and driving to the bank to transfer money, or not driving to a store to buy a product. That can’t be lost in the discussion, that the products do enable consumers to do so many different things, and our position, and I think it’s going to be proved out, is that to address climate change, IT products and [consumer electronics] products have to be part of the solution.”