Dell announces another EPEAT gold-rated PC
August 29, 2007
EPEAT is a US green success story. Here in the UK we have a government doing SFA in this area.
EPEAT, the US PC and notebook environmental ratings agency has quietly and steadily gone about setting up an effective three-tier green rating with support from manufacturers and, crucially, a mandate from the US government that all federal PC and notebook purchases must be of EPEAT-rated kit.
Dell has just announced a gold-rated desktop PC and suppliers like Lenovo and HP are actively getting products rated and product designs amended so as to deliver EPEAT ratings success. With US federal purchases leading the way corporate purchasers should follow suit as it’s an easy green ‘marketing win’ for them. It all leads to lower carbon emissions from PC use, less hazardous waste and better recycling.
Meanwhile the UK governments sits on its PC/notebook procurement bottom and does nothing. Is this the NIH (not invented here) phenomenon at work? Why isn’t the UK government mandating green PC purchases? All it needs do is to say that from a date in the future only EPEAT-rated PCs and notebooks will be bought by central and local UK government purchasing authorities.
Such purchasing is under the aegis of the Office of Government Commerce. A mildly green statement on its website says: “OGC is fully engaged with the work of the Sustainable Procurement Task Force as it develops the national action plan.”
A national action plan sounds impressive. The SPTA web site states (in August 2007) that: “The National Action Plan summarises the views and position of the members of the Sustainable Procurement Task Force. It gives recommendations on how the UK Government can succesfully meet its target of being recognised as amongst the leaders in sustainable procurement across EU Member States by 2009. The UK Government will review the National Action Plan and respond in full in Autumn 2006.”
Oops; Autumn 2006. Did we hear anything? Has the site been updated? No and no, not since July 2006. The national action plan’s first recommendation is: “for government to Lead by example.” Cue derisive laughter offstage.
The OGC is an office of the Treasury and has an executive buying agency, OGCbuying.solutions, to do the buying. It has a new chief executive coming in October.
Basically the UK government is following the SFA policy. There is a national action plan talking shop, the conspicuous failure to lead by example, the Treasury holding the purse strings and a chief executive hiatus in the buying agency. All in all, a recipe for nothing happening.
What does the acronym SFA mean? Why, sweet Fanny Adams of course.