Greenpeace activists showed their disdain for a major computer company in a demonstration that is characteristic of the non-profit organization. In a direct action this morning, several Greenpeace activists scaled the campus of Hewlett Packard in Palo Alto, Calif. and painted “Hazardous Products” in non-toxic children’s finger paint on the roof.

The San Francisco-based environmental organization criticized HP for delaying commitments to remove toxic chemicals — such as polyvinyl chloride (PVC) and brominated flame retardants (BFRs) — from its line of computer products. The company postponed removal of these chemicals, which are considered toxic, from the end of this year until 2011…

On HP’s website, the company published this statement regarding use of materials:

“We still use certain BFRs in printed-circuit boards because suitable alternatives are not yet available. As technologically feasible alternatives become readily available that will not compromise product performance or quality and will not adversely impact health or the environment, we will complete the phase out of BFR and PVC in newly introduced personal computing products in 2011.”

Texas Instruments (TI) saved $5.1 million last year by undertaking 159 projects designed to save energy, water and other resources.

The wafer fabrication processes used in semiconductor manufacturing means that energy accounts for more than 60 percent of the Texas-based company’s carbon footprint, and 94 percent of its overall utility budget. Water is responsible for 6 percent of its utility expenses. TI shrunk its global carbon footprint by 2.8 percent in 2008 to 2.07 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent. Since 2005, TI has reduced emissions by roughly 6 percent, the company said in its 2008 Corporate Social Responsibility Report, which is available online.

Last week, at San Francisco’s new California Academy of Sciences museum, IBM gathered a host of industry leaders to discuss how IT can help companies green much more than their data centers.

The company made a host of announcements, including the development of next-generation lithium ion batteries, a superefficient water-cooled supercomputer, a partnership with the city of San Francisco to monitor and improve wastewater handling, and the launch of its Green Sigma Coalition, which aims to address the environmental impacts of a company’s operations, ranging from the data center and office facilities to retail space and manufacturing plants.

The Basel Action Network and the Electronics TakeBack Coalition joined today with 32 electronics recyclers in the United States and Canada to announce that the e-Stewards program, which identifies the most responsible recyclers in North America, is soon to be fully accredited and certified.

The e-Steward Certification will be the continent’s first independently audited and accredited electronic waste recycler certification program. It will forbid the dumping of toxic e-waste in developing countries, local landfills and incinerators; the use of prison labor to process e-waste; and the unauthorized release of private data contained in discarded computers.

During 2007 and 2008, the Institute worked with representatives from Benchmark Electronics, Brooks Instrument, and Emerson Process Management to conduct and document a lead-free electronics implementation for a high reliability electronics product that is exempt from the European RoHS Directive. The research information provided by the New England Lead-free Consortium, as well as the information contained in this case study, is of high value to companies that need to transition to lead-free electronics for their high reliability products. The Institute’s university research program continues to fund research efforts to reduce the use of toxic chemicals in the electronics industry.

The need to control hazardous materials has influenced the design of circuit boards since their conception. While the industry has worked to minimize these materials by incorporating less-toxic ones, some of these safer solutions have their own risks to the environment and the health of the population. Incorporating green laminates into PCBs is just one stage of a continuing tradition of risk management in design. In recent months, published findings regarding the safety of commonly used flame retardants has the industry rethinking previous efforts to remove all halogens from the laminate supply chain.

Our insatiable appetite for gadgets — mobile phones, MP3 players and flat-screen TVs — may be adding a hidden greenhouse gas to the Earth’s atmosphere. Countries that ratified the Kyoto Protocol committed to reducing their emissions of carbon dioxide and five other heat-trapping gases: methane, nitrous oxide, hydrofluorocarbons, perfluorocarbons and sulfur hexafluoride. But these aren’t the only climate-altering chemicals being produced by human activity. In the 13 years since the Protocol was first drawn up, scientists have discovered that other gases, such as nitrogen trifluoride (NF3), could become an increasing part of the climate problem.

Virtualization Servers: The New Green Platform for IT
By Andrew Binstock
http://www.greenercomputing.com/column/2008/07/09/virtualization-servers-the-new-green-platform-it
Any attempt to green IT should begin with virtualizing your servers, which is one of the fastest and easiest ways to reduce energy use and costs, and reduce the overall carbon footprint of your IT organization. In this column, Andrew Binstock offers clear advice on how virtualization can help, and includes links to useful benchmarks.

More Companies Concerned With Power Efficiency, Fewer Willing to Pay for Green Tech: Survey
http://www.greenercomputing.com/news/2008/07/08/companies-concerned-with-power-efficiency
Rackspace’s second annual survey investigating companies’ attitudes toward green vendors and efficiency finds expenses have become a stronger force in making green decisions.

Energy Star Standards for Servers May Launch in 2008: EPA
http://www.greenercomputing.com/news/2008/07/07/energy-star-servers-launch-2008
Despite the daunting challenge of developing a performance-based rating system for servers, the EPA plans to have a phase-one version of the new Energy Star standards ready by year’s end.

Cisco Boosts Virtualization With New Products
http://www.greenercomputing.com/news/2008/07/03/cisco-virtualization-new-products
The technology company has announced new products and services that support virtualization in data centers.

Green Electronics Design and Manufacturing
http://www.greenercomputing.com/resources/resource/green-electronics-design-and-manufacturing
This book provides insight from experts in the electronics industry into how to meet global environmental regulations for greener electronics, manage corporate strategy and design teams, and implement methods for testing and analyzing green electronics products.

A synthetic chemical widely used in the manufacture of computers and flat-screen televisions is a potent greenhouse gas, with 17,000 times the global warming effect of carbon dioxide, but its measure in the atmosphere has never been taken, nor is it regulated by international treaty.

The chemical, nitrogen trifluoride (NF3), could be considered the “missing greenhouse gas,” atmospheric chemists Michael J. Prather and Juno Hsu of UC Irvine wrote in a paper released June 26 in the journal Geophysical Research Letters. “With the surge in flat-panel displays, the market for NF3 has exploded.”

Nintendo is the least eco-friendly electronics maker, and Microsoft is barely better, according to Greenpeace. The environmental group rated the practices and designs of gadget makers lower than ever in its eighth quarterly report card (PDF).