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Association Touts Its Members’ Environmental Efforts

The Consumer Electronics Association last week released a sustainability report that demonstrates various ways some of its members are reducing their environmental footprints.

In an effort to highlight the green initiatives of its members, the Consumer Electronics Association released an industry sustainability report last week.

One of CEA’s most important roles is to channel the commitment and expertise of our members to tackle environmental and resource challenges.

The “CEA 2013 Sustainability Report,” an update from a 2010 version, contains more than two dozen case studies illustrating company-specific environmental efforts.

“Each year brings new scientific and engineering breakthroughs to make products more energy efficient, less resource-intensive, and more recyclable,” Gary Shapiro, CEA president and CEO, Walter Alcorn, vice president, environmental affairs and industry sustainability, and Douglas Johnson, vice president, technology policy, wrote in the report. “Consumers increasingly desire innovative, eco-friendly products, and the [consumer electronics] industry is delivering.”

Some of the report’s highlights include:

  • An effort by LG to decrease product packaging waste by creating a database listing the recycled pulp content of paper stock used to package TVs and mobile phones. In its first year of implementation, the company reported using TV packaging that contained 80 percent recycled pulp content and mobile phone packaging with 70 percent pulp content.
  • Dell’s initiative to use alternative, fast-growing, organic sources of packaging material such as bamboo, mushrooms, and wheat straw to create a waste-free packaging system by 2020.
  • A partnership between Samsung and the Salt Lake County Health Department to increase recycling efforts in Salt Lake City, including more than a dozen public e-waste collection events such as curbside pickups.

CEA is also working to inform consumers about going green through its GreenerGadgets.org website, where people can calculate the estimated amount of energy their electronic devices use, the cost of using those electronics, the location of electronics recycling centers, and tips for reducing energy consumption.

“One of CEA’s most important roles is to channel the commitment and expertise of our members to tackle environmental and resource challenges,” Shapiro, Alcorn, and Johnson wrote in the report.

(iStockphoto/Thinkstock)

Katie Bascuas

By Katie Bascuas

Katie Bascuas is associate editor of Associations Now. MORE

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