SE Blogged

The mobile phone industry has a lot to learn from the great minds from Sony Ericsson, the Swedish Japanese joint venture may have had a very rough financial history in the past couple of years, but they have never sacrificed their goals just to make a profit. The company continues its highly respected stand in order to encourage the use of green technology and to stop the use of hazardous products in the manufacturing process.

EU legislators are currently focusing on a new effort that has been spearheaded by Sony Ericsson. They, along with HP, Dell, Acer, ChemSec, the European Environmental Bureau and the Clean Production Association have been pushing for the ban on certain chemical substances. The groups has requested that brominated flame retardants (BFR) and polyvinyl chloride (PVC) substances be completely banned from being used by 2015.

An environmental expert at Sony Ericsson, Daniel Paska, stated that: “Sony Ericsson is committed to a complete phase-out of halogenated organic substances from its products, and at the current time has phased out almost all brominated flame retardants (BFR). We believe the electronics industry has a responsibility to move proactively to find substitutes to replace BFR and PVC and are therefore calling on EU legislators to show leadership on this issue by voting to tighten the RoHS directive.”

This move is hardly surprising of Sony Ericsson; the major phone manufacturer has already been tagged as Greenpeace’s second greenest electronics company in the whole world (with the number one spot going to Finnish super giant, Nokia).

While SE’s Greenheart line of mobile phones represents the front end of their commitment to reducing the carbon footprint of technology, it is actually their internal policies that are changing the industry standards when it comes to choosing raw materials and processing chemicals. Sony Ericsson has gone a long way in proving that it is possible to make a great electronic device without having to use hazardous substances. In that light, Apple should change their standards; the manufacturer they have chosen for their iPads has been known to use poisonous chemicals in the production process.

Filed under: GreenHeart