By Sustainability team
11th June 2009.
16:22
Tag Archives: Environment
Sony Ericsson sustainability work is all about making sure we introduce maximum environmental improvements. We have no intention to launch any niche “eco” or “green” products or to drive gimmick features that may appear to be environmentally friendly but prove to be the opposite. We will not either compromise on appearance or features.
One feature that we get a lot of questions about are solar cells. We have been evaluating and tracked developments in the area of solar cells for years.
As long as there is no breakthrough in manufacturing or efficiency it is not beneficial to put a solar cell on a phone from environmental point of view. Because:
Current solar cells placed on a phone will, in their life time not generate enough energy to compensate for the energy it took to produce them. They are made out of silicon and to produce them takes a lot of energy.
Current solar cells which are the size of a phone can not replace a charger. The the size vs. efficiency of best cells today makes it impossibe to generate enough energy.
Solar cells in general are however great and we believe that they have a future in mobile industry. In 2008 together with Ericsson we supplied solar charging stations for the Millenium Villages in Africa. These chargers use bigger solar panels with a buffer battery. They can charge 8 phones in parallel and up to 75 phones a day and are intended to be used in a refugee camp, at a school or a health station. This is a very good example on how solar cells are environmentally friendly and work to improve life in areas where energy is a big problem.
There may be several reasons to put a solar cell on a phone but at current state of technology environmental benefit is not one of them.
UPDATE
Just found this video from mobile world congress way back in February but it underlines the point nicely.
thanks to faircompanies for flagging this up
GreenHeart is our way of communicating with society about the whole of Sony Ericsson’s sustainability commitment and engagement. The major part of our impact on society comes through our products this is true both for environmental as well as for societal impact. Because of this we tend to communicate about sustainability more around our products than around our internal activities.
Pretty soon the first GreenHeart products will hit the stores. The whole philosophy around GreenHeart is that we do not compromise on the appearance or quality of the products. The first pioneer products to come to the market are the phone C901 GreenHeart and the headset MH-300 GreenHeart. They come together in minimized packaging without any plastic bags or extra documentation (we are forced to have a small document for legal purposes). Another unique thing is that they are not “ECO” or “green” products. Products are by definition not environmentally friendly but many of them definitely help to improve our society.
We believe that it must be easy to make a greener choice, that people shall not be forced to pick a weird looking product of less quality or with inferior features. The GreenHeart products are well designed products that are technically improved. Further more, what makes them GreenHeart is that they also bring new innovations from a sustainability point of view. When we have introduced the sustainability innovation launched with a GreenHeart then we bring our best innovations into the wider portfolio. This way all Sony Ericsson products have elements of the GreenHeart.
This is not new to Sony Ericsson. This is in fact something we have done since the start of the company. For example already the first Sony Ericsson branded phone – the T68i – was free from brominated flame retardants (BFR) in boards and casings (a set of substances that has been in focus from both authorities and environmental organizations around the world). Then this substance phase out was brought to the wider portfolio and for over three years now all new products launched from Sony Ericsson have been free from BFR in boards and casings.
Now with GreenHeart we will start to talk about our work. On this site we hope to open a platform for communication to answer questions from people interested in sustainability and communication.
C901 GreenHeart
If you want to view the GreenHeart webcast all you have to do is visit the home page of this site page at 13:00 UK time (GMT +1) and click on the webcast headline, the webcast will automatically go live at the right time. You can watch everything as it happens and join in using the chat window at any time.
If you’d like to host the GreenHeart webcast on your own site, just visit our kyte channel, click the “get & share” button and copy / paste the code into a post / onto your homepage. It will automatically go live and you / your readers will be able to join the live chat with everyone else who is watching.
Back in September last year we announced the introduction of something we called our “environmental warranty” which is a commitment to recycle phones which are handed in at designated Sony Ericsson collection points. We also showed a prototype environmentally friendly phone GreenHeartTM. Since then, we’ve applied key learnings from the development of the prototype and have fed these innovations to new products under development. The concept of GreenHeart has grown within the company and represents our commitment to bring to market more environmentally friendly products.
Soon, we’ll be announcing the first commercial handsets to have benefited from that process and will be supporting this online with an interactive video webcast on Thursday 4th of June, at 13:00 UK time. Stay tuned for more information on about how to link into the webcast and the spokespeople you’ll be able to address your questions to on the live interactive Q&A.