Dear “Earth Talk”: Do government
“Energy Star” ratings for major appliances take into account
their “cradle-to-grave” impacts, or are they just concerned
with energy efficiency? — Fred von Mechow, by e-mail
The Energy Star program, set up back in 1992, is
designed to help consumers determine the energy efficiency of various
appliances, home electronics, office equipment, and lighting. All such
items for sale in the United States come with an “Energy Guide”
label, which indicates how much energy they will consume over the course of
a typical year and how much that energy will cost, detailing how it
compares to similar models. Those units that are especially energy-efficient
— as judged against standards set by the U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency and Department of Energy — receive an Energy Star,
indicating that they are preferred environmental choices. Clearly the
program is designed as an incentive for competing brands to lower their
products’ energy consumption and costs over time. The program is helpful to consumers who want to do
the right thing environmentally while also saving on energy bills, but it
is not a cradle-to-grave assessment. “Cradle-to-grave,” as the
term implies, measures an appliance’s environmental impact over the
course of its entire life, and it counts other factors besides energy use
and costs. German and Scandinavian manufacturers, for example,
thanks to stringent “extended producer responsibility” laws in
place there, must do more than maximize the energy efficiency of their
products. They must also eliminate hazardous materials from both the
appliances’ components and their manufacturing processes (i.e.,
“cradle”) and make them in such a way that maximizes their
recyclability and reusability so as to keep them out of landfills (i.e.,
“grave”). In fact, European EPR laws even require companies to
take back some of their products at the ends of their useful lives,
removing the burden from the consumer and from local community
waste-handling systems. And with passage last year of Directive 2005/32/EC by
the European Union, similar laws will apply for any manufacturer —
domestic or otherwise — that wants to sell appliances to
Europe’s 400 million-strong consumer market. The goal is to encourage
manufacturers to assess the full life-cycle impact of their products, which
would ideally also lead to the elimination of unnecessary parts and of
wasteful, extraneous packaging. The directive becomes law across the
continent in 2007. Meanwhile, strong industry lobbies have thus far
prevented similar legislation from taking hold in the United States, though
some state and local governments have expressed interest in European-style
take-back laws. A few forward-thinking computer makers, including IBM and
Hewlett-Packard, have started take-back programs voluntarily to salvage
some components for reuse while looking good to environmentally conscious
consumers. For the most part, though, the trend has not caught on for
American manufacturers, and there are no laws in place to force them to
abandon that age-old and not-so-green-friendly principle of “planned
obsolescence.”
For more information: Energy Star, www.energystar.gov; European Union Directive 2005/32/EC,
europa.eu.int/comm/enterprise/eco_design/
Send questions to “Earth Talk” in care of E/The
Environmental Magazine, P.O. Box 5098,
Westport, CT 06881 or e-mail earthtalk@emagazine.com.
This article appears in Feb 23 – Mar 1, 2006.
