One year ago, we launched TCO Certified, generation 8. Through strong engagement from both IT brands and purchasing organizations, the certification has already led to many successes in social and environmental sustainability.
TCO Certified, generation 8 is our largest step yet toward a sustainable life cycle for IT products. It encourages a circular approach to the production and consumption of IT products by demanding durable products that can be repaired, upgraded and recycled. We take a large step forward in supply chain responsibility with sharper criteria, increased monitoring in high risk factories and by following up on corrective action plans in an even more efficient way. TCO Certified, generation 8 is also designed to help your organization contribute to the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
During the past year, a large number of IT product brand owners have worked systematically to meet the strict criteria in TCO Certified, generation 8 and 13 brand owners can now present certified products. These are Acer, AOC, Asus, BenQ, Ciara, Dell, Eizo, HP, Iiyama, Lenovo, NEC, Philips, (Inforlandia) Insys, and Samsung and several others are close to reaching this goal. Clear sustainability progress has been made — these are just a few of the examples:
- By meeting requirements to extend product lifetime, brand owners have taken important steps toward a more circular economy.
- TCO Certified Accepted Substance List has been expanded to include safer alternatives to both plasticizers and flame retardants. Chemical manufacturers see the benefit of having their substances on the list, which leads to increased transparency.
- Audit reports, corrective action plans and a risk-categorization of factories is available for brand owners to see. This transparency gives a competitive advantage to factories with a strong focus on sustainability and we now see that factories are working more proactively to remain on the list, and improve their risk category.
- The brand owner’s anti-corruption and whistleblowing programs have been independently reviewed. Most brand owners have never had these assessments made before. Corrective action plans have been set up to handle all non-conformities to the International Chamber of Commerce guidelines.
TCO Certified, generation 8 has also been well received by organizations purchasing IT products, authorities and other parties focused on purchasing issues. Using TCO Certified is now included in the Criteria Wizard for Sustainable Public Procurement at DIFI (the Norwegian purchaser agency), and guides from Kompetenzstelle für nachhaltige Beschaffung (the German sustainability Procurement agency) and the Public Procurement Office in Poland, among others.
