Dan Warne05 June 2009, 4:24 PM
Sony Ericsson may not be winning the battle against the iPhone, Blackberry or hundreds of Nokia models, but says there's only one choice if you want to 'buy green'.
Sony Ericsson is going full-on green, launching a phone made of recycled bottle caps and a company wide emissions cutting target of 20%.
The handset maker says its first handset under the "GreenHeart" program will be called "Naite" (pictured right).
It is a conservatively styled handset that looks much like other Sony Ericsson candybar phones released in recent years, but it has been made where possible with recycled metals and plastics, as well as strict manufacturing processes designed to minimise carbon footprint, the company claims.
Although most people interested in reducing their personal carbon footprint would probably be thinking more about buying alternative energy for their home heating and cooling, and using better forms of transport rather than jumping in their car every time, Sony Ericsson says the combined carbon footprint of the millions of phone handsets sold every year adds up.
Some of the things it is doing with the Naite phone, which will be its first green handset, include:
- no printed manual in the box -- instead, it's on the phone in a screen-readable format
- the phone is made with a minimum 50% recycled plastic (some plastics in the phone like the printed circuit board can't be recycled)
- the keypad is made of recycled bottle-caps
- a low power charger that uses nearly no power when it's not actively charging the phone
- the smallest packaging possible -- no more "shelf stackers" -- to reduce the carbon emissions from shipping the phones around the world.
- a recycling program to encourage customers to recycle their old phones properly (which will be done in Australia through MobileMuster.)
- making its factories meet strict emissions targets.
That said, the savings aren't huge -- Sony Ericsson says the carbon footprint saving of the phone is only 15% compared to a comparable Sony Ericsson C902.
Sony Ericsson Australia spokesman Josh Oxspring acknowledged that "greenwashing" (where companies try to generate positive publicity through false or ineffective environmental initiatives) really happens in the corporate world, and said Sony Ericsson was genuinely committed to reducing its carbon footprint. He said the company had been working since the late 90s to reduce impact on the environment.
For example, he said, Sony Ericsson was first in 1998 to get rid of NiCd batteries which leech harmful chemicals into landfill; it got rid of toxic brominated flame retardants from its plastics in 2002 and was first to be compliant with the Carbon Footprint Compliance Act in Europe in 2004.
Sony Ericsson says it has a roadmap for reducing its carbon footprint impact by 20% overall throughout its entire operations by 2015