Report Details Consumer Electronics Industry Sustainability Progress Jan 5, 2011

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The Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) released the CEA 2010 Sustainability Report this week to highlight industry progress on green initiatives, including designing more energy efficient products, cutting greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) at facilities, and developing a national electronics recycling infrastructure.

The report is an update to CEA’s first sustainability report, issued in 2008. It tracks green efforts throughout a consumer electronics (CE) product’s entire lifecycle. The report contains 21 separate case studies.

Highlights of consumer electronics industry green efforts in the report include:

Greener Designs. Industry-wide unit sales of U.S. products registered with EPEAT (Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool) grew by 10% in 2009, to a total of 48.5 million products.

Green Packaging. Some consumer electronics companies are switching to renewable materials, including bio-based plastics, or recyclable materials instead of clamshell packaging, and are looking to reduce the amount of packaging they use.

More Efficient Facilities: Many manufacturers have set ambitious goals for reducing GHG at their facilities. Other companies have launched efforts to cut power consumption at their data centers.

More Energy Efficient Products: According to the EPA, 27,000 CE product models currently meet Energy Star specifications. The average energy savings of Energy Star electronics devices range from 20% to 55%.

eCycling: The consumer electronics industry recycled 200 million pounds in 2009, and industry supports more than 5000 permanent collection sites nationwide.

The full report is available at www.CE.org/green.

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