In this year’s edition of Impacts and Insights, we’re deep-diving into circularity. What does this actually mean for IT products — and how can the circular economy be implemented on the ground, when you procure and use IT products? What stands in the way for circularity and how can these obstacles be removed? To answer
The report Impacts and Insights 2019 measures sustainability progress among brand owners with IT products certified according to TCO Certified.
The report, Impacts and Insights, measures the most recent effects of the latest generation TCO Certified. The criteria focus on increased brand owner responsibility for supply chain working conditions and conflict minerals initiatives along with a new approach to identifying safer flame retardant chemicals. The current generation of TCO Certified, launched in November 2015, places greater overall responsibility for product and factory compliance on brand owners.
A new report takes a closer look at sustainable public purchasing and examines common myths associated with including sustainability factors in the process.
Swedbank’s values-based, risk assessment approach to IT purchasing led to choice of TCO Certified as sustainability criteria in their purchase of 10 000 notebook computers.
Increasingly, IT-using organizations are looking for computer products that are environmentally preferable and made under socially responsible conditions. Yet, shorter product cycles and growing demand for new technologies puts increasing pressure on industry and its complex supply chain to deliver new devices faster and at a lower cost. The result is often inadequate working conditions in electronics manufacturing, including long working hours, low wages and a lack of health and safety measures. The problem is widespread and well publicized through media and NGO monitoring.
Almost all IT products contain plastics. But, the use of new or “virgin oil” plastics is connected to a number of sustainability problems, including Co2 emissions, high resource use in manufacturing and the threat of hazardous petrochemicals affecting human health and the natural environment. Today only about 10% of plastics from durable goods is recycled, further adding to these threats and the global e-waste crisis. A new background report from TCO Development calls for an increase in the use of post consumer recycled plastics in IT products.