The Brattleboro, Vermont-based Northeast Recycling Council (NERC) has announced it has been honored with a 2017 EPEAT (Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool) Purchaser Award by the Green Electronics Council (GEC), Portland, Oregon, in recognition of its leadership in the procurement of sustainable IT products.
GEC presented 37 organizations with a 2017 EPEAT Purchaser Award at a ceremony sponsored by the Information Technology Industry Council (ITI), an advocacy and policy organization for the world’s leading innovation companies.
GEC says any organization that specifies EPEAT in its procurement policies is eligible for these annual awards. Purchasers are not only recognized for having a written policy in place that requires EPEAT-registered products but also for the number of EPEAT product categories from which they have purchased.
EPEAT Purchasers earn a star for each product category for which they have a written policy in place that requires the purchase of EPEAT registered electronics.
NERC was honored as a One-Star Award Winner.
When combined, the 2017 EPEAT Purchaser Award winners realized cost savings of more than $33.8 million across the lifetime of their purchased products, GEC says. Along with significant cost savings, the 37 EPEAT Purchaser Award winners also recognized considerable environmental benefits from their purchasing decisions, including combined greenhouse gas reductions equivalent to removing more than 40,000 passenger cars from the road for a year; a reduction of nearly 769 metric tons of hazardous waste; solid waste savings equivalent to that produced by 2,078 average U.S. households each year; and avoidance of 513.8 metric tons of water pollutant emissions.
GEC says large scale public and private sector purchasers globally rely on the EPEAT Registry, a leading online rating system of sustainable IT products, to identify and purchase sustainable IT products.
“The EPEAT ecolabel was established to provide large-scale purchasers a way to identify credible sustainable IT products,” says Melanie Bower, director of EPEAT. “The EPEAT Purchaser Awards allows us to recognize those organizations who chose to realize significant cost savings and positive environmental benefits by making informed decisions about the IT products they purchase.”
One star is awarded to an organization for each product category in which all of the eligibility requirements have been met. The current product categories are as follows:
- PCs/displays: (desktops, displays, notebooks, integrated desktop computers, workstation desktops and thin clients);
- imaging equipment (copiers, digital duplicators, facsimile machines, mailing machines, multifunction devices, printers and scanners); and
- televisions.
NERC describes itself as a multistate nonprofit organization that is committed to environmental and economic sustainability through responsible solid waste management.
The GEC is a nonprofit that works with stakeholders around the world to develop a shared vision for more sustainable electronics and the practical tools to realize it. Founded to inspire and catalyze environmental leadership throughout the lifecycle of electronic technologies, GEC says it supports the production of consensus-based environmental leadership standards; by operating EPEAT; and by convening global thought leaders in environmental design, strategy and marketing to envision more sustainable electronics design and delivery methods. These activities work to promote a world in which green electronics is a cornerstone of a healthy and vibrant world.