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Green Is In At CES, But Is It Real?
OTL writes "You've heard the talk of 'Green' throughout the whole of 2008, but the way a product affects the environment will be a huge consideration in consumer buying habits, at least when it comes to gadgets.
But, the CEA report also said that consumers are very skeptical about the green claims made by high-tech firms for their products. More than 38 percent of those interviewed by the CEA said they were confused by green product claims and 58 percent wanted to know the specific attributes that prompted hi-tech firms to label their products green."
What, do they paint it green? Is it because it consumes less electricity? Is it because the circuit boards are made out of cardboard and bio-degradable silly putty? Or is this whole "green" movement nothing but an excuse for the boomers to try to look responsible in the waning years of their power, covering up the gross excesses of the past few decades, living amongst superfluous abundance while the rest of us watched the economy go straight to hell? These people jabber about carbon footprints, kilowatts, and they act like this is hard science. Most of the terms these "greenies" use are vague and could be defined many ways. People think driving an electric car is green -- but then fail to take into account that those high performance batteries are highly toxic and need replaced every few years. And the aluminum required to build those cars to be light enough to be practical requires huge amounts of electricity -- and most of that energy is created by burning coal.
The problem with the green movement, and any product that caters to it, is two-fold: One, lack of total picture. There is no objective way to compare two products in a similar category in a cradle-to-grave capacity. Fundamentally, it can't yet be done because we don't know what's more or less harmful than the next thing -- does a ton of carbon monoxide in the atmosphere equate to "more harm" than several ounces of CFCs? Without a way to make a direct comparison, or have a way to objectively measure a products "green performance", calling something green is meaningless. The second problem is... Many green products are of inferior quality and are higher priced than their non-green counterparts.
Why is this sham movement getting attention in the technical community? I'm not saying this as a troll, I honestly want to know -- how can you people as engineers and scientists look at this and say that any aspect of this so-called movement is objective?
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
Energy Star deals with electricity consumption in operating and standby modes. I think that this discussion is about more general "greenness". How much water is the factory polluting? How many cancer causing chemicals are present in this product? What is your recycling plan, and how many 3rd world countries does it include? Etc, etc.
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Son
Obviously you never looked at America's rivers,etc in the 1960's.
Look at China now, that's what America was like in the 1960's.
This seems like something the feds could or maybe even should do. They want restaurants to put dietary information on menus, what's the harm in putting wattage draws on electronic product? There is a pretty clear gap in the knowledge out there now, is "Green" ROHS? Is "Green" higher efficiency parts?
If there were two nearly identical machines and one drew 80w and the other drew 120w would that affect your decision?
I historically haven't cared but I have built some systems with AMD's HE parts and saw a measurable difference in my electric bill.