Govt calls IT industry’s green bluff

Sunday, 5 February 2012

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Green Government, Policy

By Kelly Ng | 10 November 2009

IT industry leaders are not doing enough to deal with electronic waste (e-waste), governments, environmental activists, and community groups have claimed.

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Governments are the largest procurers of computers and electronic devices, making them huge contributors to e-waste. Kolkata, the world’s seventh largest city, faces the challenge of e-waste pollution and the government believes vendors should play a bigger role.

“Vendors must step forward to better manage e-waste because I believe they have the basic responsibility as solution providers,” Sri Bikash Ranjan Bhattacharyya, Mayor of Kolkata, India said in an interview with FutureGov.

While many IT vendors like to trumpet their environmental initiatives, much of this effort is commercially motivated. These efforts neglect communities and schools which have less purchasing power. “There is a huge gap between what the providers claim to be doing and what they actually do,” noted Laurence Zwimpfer, Chairperson, Computer Access New Zealand (CANZ) Trust. CANZ, an initiative supported by New Zealand’s Ministry of Education, promotes computer refurbishing and recycling of e-waste by schools and local communities.

New Zealand holds an annual initiative – called eDay – which collects old computers from schools and households to raise awareness of the benefits of recycling and the hazardous nature of e-waste. Out of 976 tonnes of e-waste collected this year, 23 per cent of equipment is from Hewlett Packard (HP) or Compaq. “As a dominant supplier in this market, HP should really step up in supporting proper e-waste disposal schemes,” urged Zwimpfer. By contrast Apple made up three per cent, IBM four per cent, Canon three per cent, and Dell – which has been a strong supporter of eDay – with four per cent, he said.

Both Bhattacharyya and Zwimpfer agreed that the burden falls on the vendor community to use less hazardous materials and make more recyclable products. IT companies should also be responsible for the product’s end-of-life and they can do so by supporting governments, schools and communities in the proper disposal of e-waste.

Environmental activist group Greenpeace is placing a lot of pressure on the global IT leaders to cut down their footprint and promote carbon reduction through the use of IT. The ICT sector, while only responsible for two per cent of global emissions, can cut the world’s emissions by approximately 15 per cent, when applied in industry, buildings, transport and the power sector. The Greenpeace Cool IT Challenge was launched this year to score how much IT companies are doing to help tackle climate change.

“Even though the IT industry will profit from strong emissions reduction targets, disappointingly, it is not even close to its potential of leading the way to a low carbon economy,” said Casey Harrell, an IT Industry Analyst for Greenpeace.