Another year has come to its end and as always, it’s been both rewarding and challenging. At TCO Development, we finished off with a real highlight — the launch of the new generation of criteria and verification methods in TCO Certified, generation 9.
Never before have we experienced such great interest and commitment to sustainability from the IT industry, or from the purchaser community. More product models than ever, from a record number of brand owners, were certified in time for the launch. The interest in attending the launch event was also record-high. Summarizing 2021, I also note that more than 100 million certified products were manufactured during the year. It’s encouraging that more and more people around the world want to be part of the solution to the sustainability challenges we all face.
With TCO Certified, generation 9, we take another big step forward with more transparency, safer chemicals, and new ways of measuring progress. We help get the purchaser’s voice further into the supply chain and include more ambitious circular criteria to extend product life and reduce e-waste.
Many other things have happened during the year as well. Here are a few examples.
We see a positive development in terms of social responsibility in the factories that manufacture certified products, and our ground-breaking system for safer chemicals is growing and used by more people.
In April, the first-ever server model was certified according to the comprehensive criteria in TCO Certified.
In June, we released our most recent report: Navigating the Sustainable IT Revolution where we look into how you as a procuring organization can drive sustainable development, avoid greenwash and prove your efforts.
Growing purchaser demand for more sustainable electronics contributed to that in October, Fairphone 4 became the first smartphone certified according to TCO Certified, generation 8.
During the year, we’ve had many inspiring and productive conversations with sustainability professionals around the world — some of them are presented in blog posts at our website. Here, Martin Rajman, Head of Central Procurement at Czech Television, explains why Sustainable procurement is a hot topic in the Czech Republic, Kate Harris, the Secretariat for the Global Ecolabelling Network talks about her experience and learnings from working with ecolabels, and Alexandra Wu from the Swedish Environmental Research Institute, explains how the circular economy is applicable to electronics.
Our Purchaser Engagement Team has grown and can now help organizations in more markets and more languages than ever.
I’m proud of what we have achieved this year and want to thank all of you who have contributed. TCO Certified is all about collaboration and finding a way forward even when challenges seem difficult to overcome. We do this by joining forces with committed, passionate people and organizations interested in sustainability around the world.
Let’s continue working together for an even more successful 2022.
Sören is CEO at TCO Development and besides being interested in more sustainable IT products (who would have guessed?) he loves cross country skiing, bicycling in the mountains and kayaking at sea.
