Yahoo News 16 Sep 08;
The world's leading mobile phone maker Nokia earned the top spot in Greenpeace's ranking of big electronics manufacturers' eco-friendliness, the environmental organisation said Tuesday.
Nokia scored seven points out of 10 in a report ranking companies on their policies regarding chemicals, waste and energy. Japanese game maker Nintendo came in last with a score of 0.8.
Greenpeace praised among other things Nokia's improved return programme in India, where it has 354 collection points enabling customers to return their old mobile phones to the maker for free.
"Nokia scores very well on toxic chemical issues, launching new models free of PVC (polyvinyl chloride) since the end of 2005 and aiming to have all new models free of brominated flame retardants (BFRs) and antimony trioxide (a chemical flame retardant) by the end of 2009," Greenpeace said in its report.
It also noted that 25 percent of the energy used by the Finnish handset maker in 2007 came from renewable sources and that it aims to increase use of renewables to 50 percent by 2010.
"We want manufacturers to eliminate harmful chemicals in their product design. We want to see an end to the stories of unprotected child labourers scavenging mountains of cast-off gadgets," the group said in a statement.
Korea's Samsung came in second position with 5.7 points. It scored well on chemicals and waste criteria and for making energy-efficient products.
Fujitsu Siemens Computers took the third spot with 5.5 points, having set late 2010 as its deadline for eliminating toxic PVC plastic and all BFRs from its products.
Greenpeace slammed Nintendo and US software maker Microsoft for their use of toxic chemicals and poor handling of discarded electronic products. The companies received scores of 0.8 and 2.2 points respectively.
