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These days, you can blink and miss the announcement of yet another eco-friendly version of some product or service you're using. Consumer electronics, cars, cleaning products—heck, even food is new and improved. Guess saving the planet will be a snap. Or will it? Turns out Kermit was right: "It's not easy being green." It's one thing to call something better for the environment and another to make it actually better, safer, or less harmful. Admen are quick to take a tiny power savings or compliance with a legal mandate and run with it to promote their product or service as the "eco-conscious" version, ignoring the larger problems their products cause. Is a device that's full of toxic hexavalent chromium but uses 7 percent less power really better for the environment? And if the company sells 10,000 more units because of the word "green" on a label, releasing that many more pounds of hazardous chemicals into the eco-system, isn't that actually worse for the planet? How does a person sort all this out?
We'll leave the cleaning products to their specialists and focus on what PC Magazine knows best: computers. In recent months, we developed a new set of benchmark tests to measure a computer's "conscience." Then we solicited "green PCs" from the major PC makers and started testing. The best earn our GreenTech Approved seal. From now on, every PC we test will undergo our proprietary, PC Magazine Labs–based green benchmark tests, and we'll take careful note of compliance with industry standards such as Energy Star 4.0, EPEAT, and Europe's Reduction of Hazardous Substances (RoHS) directive. In the coming months, we'll devise new ways to evaluate the greenness of printers, monitors, cell phones, and more in all the product categories we regularly cover.—Next: Real Consumer Benefits >
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