Naughty Nintendo: ranked top for toxicity by Greenpeace

Stuart Corner
Wednesday, 28 November 2007 03:25

Your IT - Home IT

Nintendo has been added to Greenpeace's quarterly ranking of leading IT manufacturers according to their policies on toxic chemicals and recycling and has debuted as the first global brand to score zero across all criteria. According to Greenpeace Nintendo has: no product specification or list of banned/restricted substances; provides no information on how it communicates with its supply chain; has no mechanism for identifying substances for future elimination or examples of these substances; no policy on use of PVC; no policy on use of brominated flame retardants; no reference to individual producer responsibility or recycling of used Nintendo products, and does not provide any voluntary takeback where no EPR laws exist. Nor does it provide information for individual customers on takeback in all countries where its products are sold. And it provides no information on the amount of waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) collected and recycled.

However Greenpeace's assessment is based solely on information available on company websites, although it deducts points if it finds that published policies are not being followed.

This is the first time that the guide has covered TVs and game consoles, but lead players in these markets, Philips and Microsoft, fared little better than Nintendo, scoring 2.0 and 2.7 points respectively out of a total of 10. Microsoft was criticised for its long timeline for toxic chemicals elimination and poor takeback policy and practice and Philips for having no timeline for toxic chemicals elimination. It scored zero points on e-waste policy and practice.

Star performer was Sony Ericsson. With 7.7 points it took the top spot from Nokia which fell from grace severely to ninth position (6.7 points) after having penalty points deducted for deficiencies in takeback practice in Thailand, Russia and Argentina discovered during Greenpeace's testing. Motorola suffered a similar fate to end up at 14th position with five points.

Greenpeace has been publishing the guide quarterly since August 206. It says "the ranking criteria reflect the demands of [Greenpeace's] Toxic Tech campaign to the electronics companies. Our two demands are that companies should: clean up their products by eliminating hazardous substances; takeback and recycle their products responsibly once they become obsolete." Full details are available here .