By Sustainability team
15th December 2009.
17:33
Yearly Archives: 2009
Two new cool GreenHeart™ phones and the first GreenHeart™ Bluetooth™ headeset has been announce![Hazel_PP09_PassionateRouge_GreenHeart_[1]](http://blogs.extranet.sonyericsson.com/greenheart/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/Hazel_PP09_PassionateRouge_GreenHeart_1-300x237.jpg)
d. Sony Ericsson Elm and Sony Ericsson Hazel mobile phones as well as Bluetooth™ Noise Shield Handsfree VH700. Sony Ericsson already has and will continue to develop the widest sustainability portfolio in mobile phone industry. By widening the portfolio we are providing consumers with more greener choices. Check out the pressrelease to find out more about the products.
Sony Ericsson Hazel in red!
Sony Ericsson was invited to a workshop in EU parliament on phase out of subtsances. We presented our ambitious program to phase out substances ahead of regulation. 
The meeting was organized by the environmental organization Chemsec (International Chemicals Secretariat) that writes “Leading companies within the electronics sector met EU regulators at ChemSec Conference: Moving away from Brominated Flame Retardants and PVC is possible, feasible and already happening. The Conference, arranged in the context of the revision of the RoHS Directive, gathered around 100 representatives from European Parliament, the Council and the Commission, as well as representatives of the electronics sector and trade associations.”
As part of our continous dialogue on sustainability Daniel, from our team, gave a presentation in the webinar on substance phase out and importance of knowing what you have in your product. The webinar was well attended many companies, environmental organizations and authorities manily from US but also from other parts of the world.
Sony Ericsson was invited by the the American environmental organization Clean Production Action (CPA) to talk about how we collect full materials declarations on all parts from all our suppliers. The reason why CPA wanted to use Sony Ericsson as a good example is that we are one of the few companies that collect the full declaration. We do not only focus on substances with regulation or of “extra concern”. We bellieve it is much better to have control over your product and everything it contains, rather than just what is banned.
A material declaration of banned substances should be empty – right?
There is some debate over whether or not bio plastics are good for the environment. In our GreenHeart concept study presented in 2008 we used bio plastics in the back and front cover and recycled plastics in the keypad. We wanted to explore as many different options as possible in this concept study. Based on the experience from the concept study and also the fact that the current bio plastics compete with food production, Sony Ericsson have decided not to use these bio plastics in products. The plastic called PLA – Poly Lactic Acid is made out of starch from corn.
Currently over 50% of the raw materials to production of covers in the GreenHeart models come from recycled plastics (PC- Poly Carbonate) e.g. recycled water bottles and CD records.
There are also other bio plastics that have other raw materials e.g. from wood industry or other oil plants that grow in places where food can not be produced. These plastics have other properties and can not be used in the covers of phones as easy as the PLA and recycled PC. The whole plastic sector is rapid development and the search for more sustainable alternatives both bio based as well better recycling systems for re-use of the materials.
For the time being recycled plastics have best environmental performance for products. Long term there is need to drive development of sustainable alternatives. There is a need for bio-plastics that do not compete with food but have as good performance as petroleum based. Sony Ericsson will not compromise on quality or appearance but will deliver pioneer products with new materials that are more sustainable. Keep your eyes open for news here.
Today is blog action day 2009, it’s a one day event where blogs across the world are uniting to draw attention to the problems caused by climate change, simply by talking about it. As this blog is entirely about sustainability issues and, by extension climate change, I’m not going to write a special post just about climate change, but I would like to draw to the attention of anyone reading this, some of the links that the team at blog action day has pulled together, they are very thought provoking.
http://www.pewclimate.org/global-warming-basics/facts_and_figures
http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2007/09/climate_100.html
Also, on the 24th Oct, 350.org is organising another day of global action (supported by the same people who run blog action day,) which I’ll be watching with interest. Who knows, we might even take part…
UK consumer mobile magazine Mobile Choice awarded Sony Ericsson the Green Award for Naite at its annual consumer awards in October.
Naite was given the award as the clear selection of the judges because Sony Ericsson was able to demonstrate the reduced carbon footprint of the product over its lifetime and include applications that are playful arround the theme of green.
Motivation found on their web page.
The second GreenHeart product is now launched in many markets. Naite has a CO2 saving of over 15% compared with the W890 (phone used for the original LCA study). Part of the saving is a result of the improved in phone manual (elimination of manual where only some legally required info is included providing the possiblity to significantly reduce packaging and the resulting transport savings) while the other part comes from the brand new charger that is included in the (very small) box.
The new GreenHeart charger launched with Naite has world class performance both on charging efficiency but also on no-load loss (when connected but not used). This means that it meets or exceeds Energy star level V requirements on charging efficiency and IPP five star requirement on no-load power loss (less than 0,03 W). To get a feeling for how good This means that even if a charger is connected to the grid a full year it will not use more than a quarter of a Wh. This is the same amount of wasted energy as if you forget one single 60W lamp for four and a half days.
Even if our charger is the best you can get, always disconnect the charger when you do not use it.
Here is an example of how one of our cutstomers communicate this to the UK market.
We have been leading the way in phasing out unwanted substances. This is why the Chemicals secretariat and Clean Production Action now wanted to use us as an example in the recent report of how industry can drive improvement. The basis for our activities was a life cycle study conducted several years ago. Based on it our focus has been three key areas for years out of them one is unwanted substances.
One key learning was that almost all negative impact from substances came in the waste management phase of the product life for mobile phones. This is why we have focused on the substances we have phased out e.g. BFR (Brominated Flame Retardants), PVC and Beryllium. All of these are now completely phased out or very close to being 100% phased out.
Some of our colleagues in the industry are not as happy as we are when we present the fact that we have phased out substances. We appreciate this – it is maybe easier for us that have limited number of products than for some others. On the other hand, it is possible for many companies to do much more.
We have had BFR free boards in prototype and limited production since 2000 and all our products (except one where we shared design with a competitor…) since 2004 has been free from BFR. This is unique in industry.
Before we launch any product we conduct design reviews that include substantial testing of substances. We do not only test our own products but also competitor products i.e. when we say we lead the way this is something we know. In fact, we have recently conducted a competitor analysis of so called eco or green products launched now in our industry. To our surpise we find that there are still BFR in the boards of these products.
To find out more about the report have a look at our press release or the information from the NGO´s
There has been some comments on our view on solar cells. Thank you for this input! Let’s first be clear – We have nothing against solar cells and we believe that solar energy is key for a sustainable world. We investigate all new solar cell technology that we think may have a potential. Solar cells are already sustainable if you use them in the right place.
What we say is that with current technology it does not make sense to put them on the phone. This was explained in the previous blog post on the topic.
On another question was “when”? It is very hard to say when it will be a good idea to put solar cells on a phone and do it for good environmental reasons. We need to have better technology that either is more effective to generate electricity out of light (especially indoor light) or uses less energy for production of the cell. (I will get back with some more details on how much energy it takes toproduce a cell to answer yet another question.)
The alternative is if we can reduce the power consumption of the phone radically. Probably all these in combination may make it possible to replace the charger. But I am sorry to say that it is not coming very soon.
I believe we will see other solutions and applications before that also within mobile industry. As soon as we find environmental benefit we will put solar cells in places where they are utlized properly. We base our decisions on environmental benefit over the life cycle of the product or it becomes a gimmick and not credible.
However, I love solar cells and truly believe it is the future and in the mean time – Put the solar cell in the sun!
We have got some questions related to how we secure data and improvement of environmental performance. We have many ways of tracking our perfomance and securing our products.
To conduct the LCA (Life Cycle Assessment) we work together with both parent companies, a large number of our suppliers and we also get information from Universities and institutions around the world. The LCA on the phone is based on several LCA’s from suppliers as well as acknowledged data on emissions and environmental impact from transports, raw materials extraction and energy production in different parts of the world. The basis and data input to this study is in fact extremely big.
Other than the LCA we also collect other environmental data for other purposes for example:
- Materials declarations are collected for all components covering all included materials.
- Before any product is launched analysis are conducted for different materials and assemblies at an external accredited lab to make sure we meet our requirements.
- We gather data from transport companies on fuel consumption, distances and emissions
- We measure emissions, waste generation or energy consumption at our factories and major sites pending location and size.
- We collect information on numbers and weights of products collected and recycled in our own collection systems.