*NEWS*OEM:TRYING TO GREENWASH THEIR IMAGE

[Anonymous]

Rushing to paint printers green
Printer
companies are under attack as more people become concerned about global
warming and toxic pollution.The solution? “Printer Vendors Need to
Greenwash Their Image.”
That
unfortunate headline was the theme of an e-mail newsletter this morning
from Lyra Research, a well-respected firm that tracks the digital
imaging industry.Apparently the writer didn’t realize or care that
“greenwashing” is a negative term. It describes how companies aiming to
appeal to treehuggers are painting a green face, without necessarily
cleaning up their act.Picky consumers detest this trend, which makes it
nearly impossible to tell which companies walk the green walk instead
of merely spouting a green talk. Earlier this decade, greenwashing
wasn’t so insidious because most claims of eco-friendliness were made
by small enterprises, like, say, your local weaver of organic hemp
hacky sacks.But now that the world’s biggest corporations aim to appear
green–sincerely or cynically–it’s easy to be fooled by
multimillion-dollar public relations campaigns.This year, printer
hardware is expected to contribute 1 million tons of solid waste in
this country alone, while pulp and paper companies are the
fourth-largest toxic polluters of water, according to Lyra.

The
Lyra newsletter asked, “What can the industry do to prevent an attack
by environmental groups and create a better image for itself?”
To
start, the industry could gain some friends by reworking its razor
cartridge model of ink replacement. I learned quickly–through
reviewing printers for CNET–how much people hate that the cost of ink
and toner quickly exceeds the price of the printer itself. Vendors
insist that people use their premium-price, branded inks or suffer
crummy-looking pages. And disposing of cartridges is a pain, even if
you’re organized enough to mail them in or bring them to stores, such
as Walgreen’s, for reuse.

Also, how about better tech support
and repair? Fixing gadgets should be no harder than taking a cracked
heel to the shoe cobbler. The tech industry overall should make
better-quality, longer-lasting hardware. A printer that cranks out one
page faster per minute than last season’s model is not efficient. A
printer that lasts but a year and costs more to fix than replace is not
sustainable.Yes, people at HP and most other printer companies have
made sincere efforts to establish responsible recycling programs.
They’ve also made more models Energy Star efficient, experimented with
corn-based plastic and modular components, and made it easier to print
on two sides of a page to reduce paper waste. You might even argue that
personal photo printers are kinder to the planet than traditional lab
photofinishing.

Still, what’s the secret sauce in all that
proprietary ink and toner? Materials safety data sheets that companies
are required by law to report do not detail the little-tested toxicity
of these chemical cocktails. The information is limited largely because
American laws regulating potentially dangerous chemicals are
notoriously weak.It took independent testing by an Australian lab to
root out potentially cancerous, asthma-inducing ingredients in laser
toner.I don’t want to breathe in that noxious dust at my desk, and I
certainly don’t want to breathe in the hot air of greenwashing. Let’s
hope that tech companies boast of small successes in moving toward
sustainability without getting ahead of themselves.

[Author]

November 21, 2007 at 1:55 PM