Like other eco-consumerists, I closely follow what Greenpeace are up to and praise their full frontal involvement with greener electronics. Their pressure group activities are of significant value, but they fail to address the real issues of the consumer electronics industry. Their activity at Cebit focused on an idea that manufacturers were more interested in being seen to be green than actually being green. Greenpeace wants manufacturers to make their products more recyclable and to reduce energy consumption - a fair point, but Greenpeace have so far failed to tackle head on the political hot potato of massive overproduction through unrestrained product commoditization.

Greenpeace focuses more on making green than making less…

The bottom line which Greenpeace should start making waves about

Electronics manufacturers today are experiencing historic revenues. The underlying reason is that electronics sold today are rapidly superseded by newer models so that they appear outdated. This has been most notable over the last 10 years.

The result has been a significant downward shift in a product’s life cycle which has helped to create the throw away society that we live in today. A decade ago you may have had a camera for 10 years – these days some will be looking to upgrade it after 10 months.

In the last 5 years Apple have sold nearly 100 million iPods. 5 years previous it took DVD players the same time to sell just 15 million units, which was a record at the time. In fact 21 Million 6th Generation iPod upgrades were sold in the last quarter alone.

Apple is not an extreme example. Blu-ray and LCD TVs are both projected to sell even more units over the next 3 to 4 years.

This level of production is now creating an e-waste crisis which can only partially be effected by making products which are relatively greener. Manufacturers need to be seen to be green, but they need productivity to keep expanding and the two cannot realistically co-exist – something that Greenpeace either entirely ignores or completely overlooks.

Being seen to be green has become more of a sophisticated marketing exercise, while productivity in the industry has increased more than 10 fold over the last decade.

As consumers we all love consumer electronics, and there is a way for us to be greener when buying them. trade 2 save the planet wants to encourage consumers to do what Greenpeace hasn’t really addressed: Reduce the demand for new consumer electronics by choosing to buy pre-owned electronics where possible - and importantly trade in that product to someone else when you no longer use it.

By doing this a product’s life span can be increased 4 or 5 fold - that’s 4 to 5 times less e-waste and 4 to 5 times less demand on energy by the global manufacturing industry.

Product life cycles are now so short that most pre-owned products show little sign of age or wear. All those iPhones bought last year which will be upgraded to the next 3G model will all be in great condition. Consumers could buy these pre-owned iPhones on auction sites, but a majority of consumers don’t because many aren’t confident of the condition and there’s no warranty if they develop a fault.

Trade 2 save will buy from customers who want to trade-in their old iPhones as well as other products. Every product traded-in will be tested and every product is then repackaged and sold on with a warranty so customers can feel confident about buying pre-owned.

Trade 2 save will stock all the major brands of consumer electronics, including Computing, Gaming, Cellphones, Movies and Apple. With increased confidence in pre-owned electronics and more companies providing this type of service, it may become as common to have a pre-owned laptop or iPhone as it is to have a pre-owned car. This is not what manufacturers will want because demand for new product imported from China would diminish.

The car industry fought the idea of second hand dealerships for decades. They eventually gave in and now they run their own pre-owned franchises. Imagine if today (like consumer electronics) 90% of all cars bought were bought brand new? America would be one massive rusty car dump. As it is, India and China are fast becoming the consumer electronics/e-waste dumps of the western world.

Manufacturers will claim credit for making products greener over the coming years, and making them greener is of vital importance. However, with productivity set to increase at the same rate as it has done over the last decade, the biggest cause of e-waste is being overlooked.