Jeff St. John: October 2, 2009, 6:26 PM

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Greenpeace Gives HP, Apple More Green Points

Greenpeace might have waited about a month, and saved itself the paint.

It was in late August that Greenpeace trespassed on Hewlett Packard's Palo Alto, Calif.-headquarters to paint the words "hazardous product" on the roof - an attack on HP's failure to meet deadlines to reduce polychlorinated biphenyls (PVC) and brominated flame retardants (BFRs) in their products.

What Greenpeace didn't know was that HP was about to come out with a nearly BFR and PVC-free notebook, the ProBook 5310m, which launched in mid-September.

That's one big reason that Greenpeace upped HPs store on its Guide to Greener Electronics report released Friday. Now Greenpeace is applauding HP for pushing the rest of the industry on a similar course.

Not that HP is leading that charge – Greenpeace points to Apple, which phased out BFRs and PVCs from its products last year, as taking that leadership role.

But neither HP nor Apple took top slots on the Greenpeace list. Those went to Nokia, Samsung, Sony Ericsson and Philips, respectively. The lowest scorers were Nintendo, Fujitsu, Microsoft and Lenovo.

The Greener Electronics report is largely focused on IT companies' policies on toxic chemicals in products, as well as how they reclaim, recycle and dispose of them (see Dell Stakes Out Aggressive E-Waste Policy).

Scoring policies on reducing carbon emissions from the sourcing, manufacture and lifecycle of IT products is the focus of Greenpeace's "Cool IT Challenge" launched in May (see Greenpeace Launches Green IT Scoreboard).

Apple had been dinged for failing to release details on its carbon emissions reduction claims, but released those late last month, which helped it rise in the latest green scorecard, Greenpeace said (see New York Times).

HP, for its part intends to have the aforementioned toxics out of its products by 2011, Bonnie Nixon, HP's Director of Environmental Sustainability, said Friday at a San Francisco conference hosted by the Rocky Mountain Institute.

While she said that Greenpeace's stunt was considered vandalism by some HP executives - "you can't take a hose on the roof and wash that paint down the storm drain," she noted – she applauded the nonprofit for pushing its "consumer watchdog" role.