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Posts with tag environment

Sony Ericsson trying to not destroy Earth with "GreenHeart" concept

by Chris Ziegler, posted Sep 25th 2008 @ 3:10AM


Perhaps a nod to Samsung's corny candybars and Nokia's wild Earth-friendly hardware, Sony Ericsson has unveiled its GreenHeart concept, a never-destined-for-production handset that incorporates a bunch of green technologies that it'd like to bring to market over the coming years. Most of the GreenHeart's ideas are totally logical and could be executed today -- online user manuals, bioplastic and recycled plastic materials, and a charger that draws just 3.5mW in trickle mode, just to name a few -- but the company is shopping around the whole lot of it to customers and "selected partners" to determine which eco-concepts should be implemented for production and in what order. Unfortunately, Sony Ericsson isn't seeing fit to show any pictures of the GreenHeart right now, which we take to mean it looks like a tree.

[Via Unwired View]

Samsung double boils corn, makes SCH-W510 and SGH-F268

by Sean Cooper, posted Jun 18th 2008 @ 12:04AM


We've seen providers getting all green, and now it seems at least one of the big handset makers has seen fit to try a more earth-friendly approach. Samsung's W510 (pictured on left) and F268 sets, announced today at the World IT Show in Seoul, both feature a couple little dashes of greenery -- and are a decent first effort we'd wager. The W510 is made from a "bio-plastic" created with natural materials extracted from corn and its manufacturing process skips the use of lead, mercury, and other miserable ingredients. The F268 and its accessories don't contain any brominated flame retardants or PVC, and the handset features an alarm to let you know when it's charged and can be unplugged from the wall -- we like this one best, because while definitely green you could still brag a bit about it. The W510 packs a 2.1-inch screen, 2 megapixel camera, FM radio, Bluetooth, extra storage headroom via microSD, and should be landing in Korea this month. The F268 is a triple-band slider with a 2 megapixel camera, Bluetooth, 2.1-inch VGA display, and also makes it debut this month in China. So there you have it friends, proof positive that green and cellular can be friends -- or have at least started flirting a bit.

Apple responds to Greenpeace: what part of "end of 2008" didn't you understand?

by Thomas Ricker, posted Oct 16th 2007 @ 4:05AM


Yesterday's battle between Greenpeace and Apple had the former publicly chastising the latter for its continued use of hazardous chemicals in its iPhone. While they conceded that Apple is compliant with Europe's RoHS (Restriction of Hazardous Substances) standard, they lambasted Cupertino for its continued use of PVC and brominated flame retardants (BFRs) which, according to Greenpeace, "suggests that Apple is not making early progress towards its 2008 commitment to phase-out all uses of these materials." This morning, an Apple spokesperson told Macworld that, "Like all Apple products worldwide, iPhone complies with RoHS, the world's toughest restrictions on toxic substances in electronics. As we have said, Apple will voluntarily eliminate the use of PVC and BFRs by the end of 2008." Sure, you can fault Apple for not being as environmentally friendly as PVC-free Nokia, or Motorola and Sony Ericsson who offer some devices with BFR-free components. However, Greenpeace shouldn't feign surprise at what they found.

Greenpeace dismantles iPhone, discovers "hazardous chemicals"

by Darren Murph, posted Oct 15th 2007 @ 3:49PM


Apple's no stranger to being slammed by Greenpeace, and while Steve certainly spoke of a "Greener Apple," it seems that the iPhone wasn't included. According to tests arranged by the entity, it was found that the iPhone contained "toxic brominated compounds (indicating the presence of brominated flame retardants) and hazardous PVC," which are said to be disallowed across the pond due to RoHS requirements. More specifically, the independent testing found "brominated compounds in half the samples, including in the phone's antenna, in which they made up 10-percent of the total weight of the flexible circuit board." As expected, Greenpeace wasted no time pointing to rival firms that have received pats on the back for their green efforts, and subsequently shook a finger at Apple while murmuring "tsk tsk" -- but we'll leave the actual politicking to you all in comments, cool?

Update: Greenpeace does not claim that Apple is in violation of RoHS.

[Via Switched, thanks Laura]

Alcatel goes green, reduces packaging

by Sean Cooper, posted Jun 30th 2007 @ 11:50AM


It seems mobile operators and now their handset suppliers are starting to take the environment into consideration -- three by our reckoning, and in only a couple months -- by doing favors for ol' mother nature. Alcatel, working in conjunction with Carbon Footprint has tweaked the packaging of its new device line and made it three times smaller. This is of course environmentally pleasant from an energy consumed perspective, reduced shipping costs, and in shrinking the piles on the desks at Engadget Mobile. Packaging is useful for shipping, but if you're picking up your mobile at a corporate store, the handset, a CD, and whatever cables are required really is enough. Thank you Alcatel, from the very bottoms of our hearts -- now if only somebody would work on the impossible-to-open-without-a-saw shrink packaging.

[Via textually.org]

UCSD's Squirrel puts pollution monitoring on your mobile

by Darren Murph, posted May 7th 2007 @ 5:05PM

Giving an animal a phone to tote around and monitor pollution is one thing, but hooking up a critter to your cellphone sans wires sounds like a much more viable solution to keeping track of filthy surroundings. UC San Diego's Squirrel -- which sounds an awful lot like a project UC Berkeley was working on -- is a Bluetooth-enabled, palm-sized sensor that currently measures carbon monoxide and ozone, but eventually will be able to "sample nitrogen oxide and sulphur dioxide in the air, as well as temperature, barometric pressure, and humidity." After sampling, the device then utilizes a software application dubbed Acorn to allow the user to "see the current pollution alerts through a screensaver on the cellphone's display." Furthermore, the program can periodically upload the captured data to a public database operated by the "California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2), which is funding Squirrel's development." Of course, cleaning up the mess that these monitors will inevitably find is an entirely different matter.

[Via MedGadget]

Unplug your charged phone, save the world

by Chris Ziegler, posted Oct 11th 2006 @ 2:07PM

Who knew that leaving a fully-charged phone plugged in to the wall was such a problem? Nokia's formed a new group -- including rival Motorola, among others -- with the aim of educating folks on ways to use their phones in environmentally conscious ways, a move that seems appropriate for the company recently named greenest among cellphone manufacturers.. Among other initiatives, the group will be pushing to add reminders to phones' displays to unplug them once they've been topped off, a change that Nokia says would power about 60,000 homes a year if just 10 percent of the populace complied. The obvious question is, don't the phones begin discharging once they've been unplugged, thereby requiring deeper and longer charging the next time they're jacked in?

Nokia gets nod for being green

by Chris Ziegler, posted Aug 26th 2006 @ 8:07PM

Greenpeace's "Green Electronics Guide," which ranks global electronics companies quarterly on environmental friendliness, has Nokia coming out on top among ranked phone manufacturers and ties Dell for best manufacturer overall. The guide apparently takes into account a variety of factors, including corporate policy, quantity of environmentally destructive chemicals used in production, and recycling programs. Sony Ericsson, Samsung, and LG are all bunched up in the middle of the pack, with Motorola finishing a distant last, besting only Lenovo. According to Greenpeace, all of the manufacturers have room for improvement -- Nokia included -- but hopefully this serves as a stark reminder to Moto that they need to, uh, start taking back our worn-out RAZRs and replacing them with MOTORAZR MAXXes. Yeah, that's it.

[Thanks, Abdul]




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