Greenpeace faults many tech giants for environment impact
SEOUL: The environmental group Greenpeace issued a report yesterday giving technology titans including Samsung Electronics, Amazon and Huawei low marks for their environmental impact. Many of the biggest technology companies failed to deliver on commitments to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases and are still reluctant to commit fully to renewable energy, according to Greenpeace USA’s Guide to Greener Electronics. The report, which assessed 17 top global tech companies in three areas, also faulted many of them for failing to use more recycled materials in their products and slow progress in phasing out use of toxic materials.
“Tech companies claim to be at the forefront of innovation, but their supply chains are stuck in the Industrial Age,” Gary Cook, a campaigner at Greenpeace USA, said in a statement.
The report details the hidden cost behind what may be the most sought-after and celebrated consumer products in the 21st century: mobile computing devices like smartphones and tablet computers. Since 2011, Greenpeace has urged global tech companies to transition to renewable energy, prompting some of them to switch to environmentally friendly power sources for their data centers. The group is urging the industry to tackle energy issues in manufacturing and supply chains, design longerlasting products to reduce electronics waste and urging an overall rethink of its “take-makewaste” business model.
The report highlighted that tech companies’ manufacturing processes are not as environmentally friendly as their innovative images might suggest. While the energy consumption in the tech industry rose rapidly to fuel the supply chains and the manufacturing of these products as well as the data centers where social media, cloud computing and other applications run, so have the greenhouse gas emissions.
Samsung Electronics received a grade of D in its use of renewable energy, which accounted for just 1 percent of its manufacturing process, compared with Apple, which relied on renewable energy for 96 percent of its operation. Samsung, the world’s largest maker of smartphones and key component suppliers of many of the tech companies featured in the report, saw its greenhouse gas emissions rise 24 percent in 2016 from two years ago. — AP