Today, roughly 76% of the United States' population owns a desktop PC or laptop computer. The average life of the average home computer is roughly 3-4 years (with hardware and software improvements) and consumers purchase hundreds of thousands of new PCs every year. The life span for laptops is lower as they break easier and are harder to upgrade due to their compact design. When new PCs are purchased, often the old PC is simply thrown away. Sometimes when buying a new computer, companies like Dell will offer a service to recycle your old one, saving it from its eventual final resting place at the bottom of a landfill. But, too often, old PCs are tossed out with yesterday's garbage.

What many are not fully aware of is the amount of harmful, toxic materials that most PCs are constructed with, even supposed “green” PCs. And when a PC to tossed into a landfill, these toxics materials can have potentially adverse affects on the environment.

Now, just to clarify, this post is not meant to scare you away from green PCs. I think we can all agree that it is wonderful that companies are working to green their products by building them to work with less power. My aim here is to better define what a green PC actually is (or should be), recognize the current problems with computer manufacturing, and point you to solutions to create better green PCs. I'll even tell you how to purchase a PC so green you'll both protect the environment and have the horsepower to play Team Fortress 2 while talking on Skype as you download that 100 meg file.

For those of you scratching your heads and wondering what all this computer blogging is about, a green PC is a desktop or laptop computer that uses less electricity to perform the basic tasks required than standard PCs or laptops. Thus, its carbon footprint on the planet is less. But a PC or laptop that uses less power is not necessarily a green one. Green PCs are often built containing hazardous materials like brominated flame retardants (BFRs), lead, cadmium, selenium, and mercury. These materials are relatively standard in almost all desktop and laptop computers manufactured; even the “green” ones. The plastic casing that houses your PCs harddrive, motherboard, and processor can contain BFRs. The circuit board can have cadmium and selenium; the LCD monitor backlight can contain mercury. Knowing this, many experts agree that in order for computers to be truly "green," it is not so much the amount of power they save when they work, but the materials they are made from and how they are made. Here's a quote from a Tree Hugger article from Jeremy Elton Jacquot, Los Angeles:

Eric Williams, a professor at the Arizona State University, believes that the best way to minimize the impact of computers would be to extend their life cycles instead of urging consumers to purchase newer, supposedly less power-hungry systems on a regular basis. He argues that while only 20% of a PC's total energy consumption comes from using it, a whopping 80% comes from manufacturing it in the first place.

Professor Williams' point cannot be stressed enough. Prolonging the lifespan of your PC or laptop is a much better environmental practice than simply buying a new one that is made more energy efficient. Obviously, this is not in the best interests of computer companies, who sell the concept of their new "green PCs" so that consumers can spend money on new products. I understand that their bottom line is to make money, and making energy efficient PCs certainly helps that bottom line. But the issue here is preventing hazardous materials from polluting the environment, and there are ways for manufacturers to make better, more eco-friendly PCs and PCs components that will not drastically affect their bottom line. They just haven't been as motivated to push these new kinds of products to consumers. In the meantime, computers can last longer if given a new harddrive, a boost in RAM, a new video card, etc. If all the items I just listed sounded like Greek to you, don't worry. Places like Best Buy's "Geek Squad" can help you upgrade your PC, and the cost for their help is pretty manageable.

To give you a general idea of just how hazardous the materials inside a computer are, check out this article which instructs IT professionals on how best to protect themselves if they need to refurbish or dispose of an old PC.

So, what’s being done to make PCs truly green? I mentioned before that many American companies are not as motivated to push new, more eco-friendly PCs to their customers. That isn't the case overseas. The European Union passed a piece of legislature in 2003 called the Restriction on Hazardous Substances (RoHS) Directive, which restricts the use of many hazardous materials in computer manufacturing. From Green Living Ideas:

Across the pond, RoHS-compliant products exclude specific hazardous substances such as lead, mercury, hexavalent chromium, cadmium, and some brominated flame retardants. Companies producing these products must also incorporate a minimum of 65 percent reusable or recyclable components, develop a plan to manage products at the end of their life cycle, and reduce or eliminate toxic materials in their packaging. EPEAT ratings, which come in Bronze, Silver, and Gold, are evaluated according to 51 environmental criteria, 23 of which are mandatory and 28 being optional.

Unfortunately, there is no US federal law equivalent, but there is a law in the state of California called the California’s Electronic Waste Recycling Act (EWRA) that is similar. Because of this law (and its inspiration, the EU's RoHS), companies like Dell and Apple have pledged remove BFRs from their PC casings by 2008 or 2009. Companies are also starting to make their computer casings out of recycled plastics from discarded PCs, but this is not common and still does not address the other potentially harmful components that make up a computer’s “guts.”

Fortunately, if you are looking to buy a PC that is made from less hazardous materials, you can do a search on the Electric Product Environmental Assessment Tool's (EPEAT) website. EPEAT provides a great search feature that allows you to find PCs based on manufacturer and eco-friendly rating in certain key categories. Gold rated computers contain the least amount of harmful materials. When you bring up the search result, you can click on individual PCs and see how they rate in categories like reduction or elimination of harmful materials, energy conservation, and design for end life (aka, is it built to last). Not to plug a specific manufacturer or product, but since I promised to offer you a good PC that is greener than most, a good example of a better green PC is HP's Compaq dc7800 Convertible Minitower. It has a Gold ranking on EPEAT's website, and scores a 5 out of 5 in the reduction or elimination of harmful materials category.

It also has a 3 Gig Intel® Core™2 Duo E8400 processor. In English, that means the PC runs very fast and can perform at a high level doing multiple tasks (like playing Team Fortress 2 while talking on Skype as you download that 100 meg file).

Again, many PCs and laptops made today are more eco-friendly than the PCs of just a few years ago. So progress is being made in the on-going attempts to green Information Technology, but for the time being it is important to know that your brand new green PC might not be as “green” as you thought, as PCs are often built using hazardous materials. But even on that front, new legislation and public awareness will eventually force the industry to push up efforts to make "greener" PCs. For now, it might be more green to keep the PC you have rather than buy a new one.