There appears to be little consistent information for evaluating manufacturer claims about green phones and other mobile devices and much of that is dated. We've added newer rankings, but left the original ones here for those looking at older phones.

Earth Hour is an initiative sponsored by the World Wildlife Fund and others to raise awareness about global warming by asking individuals, municipalities, and businesses to turn off their lights for one hour (8:30PM local time, 28 Mar). Turning off our personal computers and e-devices appears to be a more complicated issue.

Vertatique raised the issue back in 2007 of increased home energy consumption and carbon emissions due to widespread deployment of digital-to-analog (DTA) converter boxes in 2009. Energy Star reports that "In the U.S. alone, depending on viewer behavior and product design, EPA estimates that conventional DTAs could consume more than 3 billion kilowatt hours (kWh) per year and cost Americans $270 million annually in additional electricity bills."  New DTA models hold hope for improving the situation.

Apple's new Mac Mini has achieved EPEAT Gold certification through attention to four different aspects of its design and life cycle.

See more about EPEAT and other green ratings for Apple gear at Greenest e-Gear.

"Consumer electronics is the fastest-growing source of electricity use in people's homes," says the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). "It's now up to 15 or 20 percent." Video game consoles are the latest devices to come under energy use scrutiny. "Today, more than 40 percent of all homes in the United States contain at least one video game console . . .they consumed an estimated 16 billion kilowatt-hours per year -- roughly equal to the annual electricity use of the city of San Diego. Through the incorporation of more user-friendly power management features, we could save approximately 11 billion kWh of electricity per year, cut our nation's electricity bill by more than $1 billion per year, and avoid emissions of more than 7 million tons of CO2 each year." Until the industry steps improves its devices' power management, "gamers can significantly reduce the energy consumed by their consoles through simple steps like turning off the console when not actively playing a game or watching a movie and enabling power management features when available." Visit the NRDC's consoles page to read the comprehensive report, Lowering the Cost of Play by Noah Horowitz, and to learn how to enable power management features on existing consoles.

[Thank you to NRDC's Anthony Clark for providing graph.]

5%-10% of residential power can be consumed by devices that are turned 'off'. Best Buy declared 30 October 2008 "National Vampire Awareness Day" The point? Alert customers to the 40% of home electronics energy consumption (and associated carbon emissions) that occurs when devices appear to be off are actually in standby mode. These are called "vampire devices" because the suck energy during the night. Best Buy offers these tips, applicable to home, dorm room, and office:

The One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) initiative represents the cutting, if not controversial, edge of green e-device design. The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) has published an interview with OLPC's CTO Mary Lou Jepsen, which is a insightful must-read for anyone interested is sustainable e-device design.

Responsible consumers are finding more options available for recycling their e-waste. One innovative approach is BuyMyTronics.com, which offers cash for iPods, iPhones, and game consoles, including broken items. Most existing services just accept e-gagets as donations or even charge for disposal. Here's what I learned when I did a obsolete gadget sweep:

Behavioral Power Management encompasses the cultural changes within a community that result in manual power management practices that drive increased energy efficiency and reduced carbon emissions.

For example, Climate Savers Computing calculates:

U.S. college students could save more than 2.3 billion kilowatt hours per year of electricity by enabling power saving features on their desktop PCs. That equals an annual savings of more than $200 million in energy costs and a 1.8 million-ton reduction of CO2 emissions from the operation of computers –equivalent to taking more than 350,000 cars off the road.

Compare with Active Power Management.

A video posted on Vertatique raised the issue of energy consumed by Massive Multiplayer Online Games (MMOG or MMO) like Second Life. Some of the assertions based on impact calculations may surprise you.