The ecoATM is "...an automated self-serve kiosk system that uses patented, advanced machine vision, electronic diagnostics, and artificial intelligence to evaluate and buy-back used electronics directly from consumers for cash or store credit." What happens to the collected e-waste?

We were critical of Apple's environmental stance a couple of years ago, saying that the company was positioned to be a leader rather than a a foot-dragger. Since then, the company has made significant strides, such as improvements to its take-back recycling programs*. On the downside, issues about its Chinese contract manufacturing operations have been slow to be resolved. Recent actions toward addressing labor issues need to be matched with ones addressing environmental issues. Factory pollution takes a toll on both workers and neighbors.

UK's Waste & Resources Action Programme (WARP) conducted a study of the Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) content of Household Waste Recycling Centres (HWRCs). What can we learn, besides UK greens' fondness for initials? Turns out media, not IT, gear is the largest category. Upgrades are driving this waste stream.

EPEAT® - "the definitive global registry for greener electronics" - simplifies its twenty-three required IEEE 1680 criteria and twenty-eight optional ones into a simple Bronze-Silver-Gold designation. EPEAT Gold models meet all required criteria and at least 75% of the optional ones. ~20* manufacturers are now offering over 1700* EPEAT Gold products registered for the United States. This is more than double the number we counted twenty-one months ago.

Here is a summary of studies on the e-delivery of software, movies, music, and books, compared with physical delivery, based on three studies from 2009.

The US ENERGY STAR program looks only at energy efficiency and not other sustainability factors. Twenty set-top box (STB) units for cable, IP, or satellite from seven manufacturers came in at less than 100W in the program's Total Energy Consumption (TEC) metric. Apple TV is the most efficient, helped by its very low stand-by power consumption. The unit has a number of other sustainability features, as well. Here is the list we derived from the ENERGY STAR database.

Desktops and workstations are still widely-used in enterprise computing, particularly for demanding applications, although some of these models are targeted to the consumer. Nine manufacturers are offering over 170 models in the EPEAT Gold database. Ace, All-In-One, Dell, HP, and Lenovo offer the most choices; Ace, Grace, Verdio, and Wipro are the latest to have products on one of these green rankings. BenQ and MDG no longer have desktops listed by any ratings systems, so they have been dropped from this table.

300+ EPEAT Gold displays offered in USA: LG and Samsung offer the most. No additional manufacturer has registered EPEAT Gold displays since we analyzed the EPEAT database six months ago six months ago. Then there were 200+ EPEAT Gold displays; the growth has come from existing participants.

We wrote in 2007, "…cable subscribers who feed TV sets and VCRs directly with analog cable taps (at least 32 million HH) may have to use STBs [set-top boxes] from their cable companies. The elimination of analog cable signals could drive [another] spike in energy consumption." A 2011 NRDC report reveals that this has, unfortunately, come to pass: