Buying a Green Laptop to Save the Earth
Buying a laptop is a smart environmental decision compared to buying a desktop computer. The main reason is that a laptop is smaller than a desktop, so there is less environmental impact at disposal. The slim size of the flat laptop means there are smaller and less dangerous parts to dispose of such as hard drives, cd / dvd drives, flash card readers, USB ports, etc. Manufacturing smaller and smaller laptops also has an indirect effect, as processing plants produce fewer harmful emissions to the environment. Another factor that makes laptops a better environmental decision is the fact that most laptops are now compliant with European regulations on lead-free computing such as WEEE (Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment) and RoHS (Restrictions on Lead Free). hazardous substances), which are mandatory disposal. codes in Europe. Lead is primarily used to solder parts together in a computer, but these regulations encourage companies to use other methods to build a PC.
An interesting player in the eco-friendly laptop market is the “one laptop per child” project. Its mission is to produce a low-cost laptop, the “XO laptop”, to revolutionize the way the world’s children are educated. The purpose of the project is to put laptops in the hands of people in third world countries who would not otherwise have access to this technology. But the project is also showing that laptops can be produced very cheaply – laptops that weigh less than a kilogram and are not dependent on electricity.
But despite the advancements in the world of eco-friendly laptops, there are still many issues that need to be addressed in order to make an even greener laptop. In 2009, worldwide laptop sales are expected to exceed those of desktop computers for the first time. The average person will keep a laptop for just three years before it is thrown in the closet or in the trash, pushing the problem of an even more recyclable laptop. Some issues that still need to be addressed and some possible solutions:
1. Problem: Plastic filled with oil. Solution: Produce laptops from corn using bioplastic polymers. The main problem at this point is creating a heat resistant polymer that can withstand the heat of a laptop.
2. Problem: power supply. Solution: Use the sun’s energy to recharge your laptop. Solar power chargers are in the works.
3. Problem: Lead products in waste. Solution: As mentioned above, the European Union has enacted legal restrictions on lead. President Bush has also followed suit with the standards for lead use in the United States.
4. Problem: hard drives spinning. Solution: The laptops of the future could reduce their power use by up to 10 percent by replacing hard drives with flash memory, which does not have moving parts that consume many watts. Dell introduced a laptop with a 32-gigabyte solid-state drive this year.
Some of the recent award winners for environmentally friendly laptops include: XO Laptop, Toshiba Portege R500, HP 2710p, Lenovo Thinkpad X300, and Dell D630.