By Sustainability team
14th June 2010.
14:41
Monthly Archives: June 2010
Last Friday was Green Friday here at Sony Ericsson! It was an event to inspire employees to think about what they can do to minimize their own impact on the environment. During lunch hours in the lobby of Sony Ericsson’s office in Lund, Sweden, we set up a number of stations covering for example green travel and commuting. We displayed the Sony Ericsson donations projects, and off course we showed off all the Green Heart products, both phones, packages and accessories. The cafeteria served two eco-food dishes, and bike helmets were handed out to employees who want to bike to work.
However, most popular was the Green Tip-station where employees were encouraged to write their favorite green tip on a cup in exchange for free, ecological coffee. The cups will be placed out in the office building, serving as constant reminders of small changes that we all can do to make ourselves a little greener. And, if you bring a green tip cup to the Sony Ericsson cafeteria, you will get free coffee as a reward for not using a paper cup!
The event was a great success and it was a lot of fun to see how dedicated people are and how many great green ideas are out there, just waiting to be collected!
People at work writing Green Tips on coffee cups!
In May, Greenpeace released the 15th version of their Guide to Greener Electronics. Sony Ericsson keeps the second place, scoring a few decimal points below Nokia. The rest of the competition is far behind. This is how Greenpeace commented Sony Ericsson’s performance:
“Sony Ericsson remains in 2nd place, with the same score of 6.9. It is the best performer on the toxic chemicals criteria of all the ranked brands, being the first to score full marks on all chemicals criteria. It also does well on energy”
Some of the improvement areas pointed out by Greenpeace, for example Carbon Footprint disclosure, will be much clearer as soon as the latest Sustainability Report has been released. Hopefully that will be recognized by Greenpeace so that we can score even better in the following version!
This is how the companies line up:
If you want to visit the full guide to read the evaluations of all companies, click here.
Today Sony Ericsson announced two new Bluetooth head sets the VH110 and VH410 both meet our GreenHeart requirement on smaller packaging, PVC/BFR free, recycled plastics, water borne paint etc. This show our intention of driving the whole portfolio towards our GreenHeart requirements.
The step up is a real improvement where our new packaging will make a real difference both from environmental perspectives but also from user friendliness. I think most of us have experienced problems in opening these “blister packs” from hangers. With help from green innovation once again user experience and better environmental performance goes hand in hand.
It is amazing to see the creativity how you can let go of “old truths” when you give a team a task and tell them that we need to improve from environmental perspective.
I am impressed with the packaging team of the accessories unit.
Yesterday the environmental committee (ENVI) in the European Parliament voted on the amendments in the revision of the RoHS directive.
The result was that no new substances are proposed to be banned immediately when the directive enters into force (i.e. no substances are included into Annex IV of the directive). However, a number of substances, including brominated flame retardants (BFR) and PVC, are proposed to be evaluated for a possible future ban.
Sony Ericsson has worked for an extended ban of BFR and PVC and even if we are dissapointed with the outcome of the votings and that there will be no immediate bans, the proposal from the environmental committee gives a strong signal to the market that these substances are problematic.
Once again this shows that Sony Ericsson did the right thing when decided to phase out BFR and PVC more than five years ago! We also encourage the rest of the industry to do so, where this is possible.
So, what will happen next? The European Parliament will vote on the amendments in Plenary in July and then the Commission, the Council and Parliament have to agree on a common ground for the legislative texts. If everything goes smoothly, the directive could be adopted during the autumn 2010.