A place to check out green tech credentials

Full disclosure: I am quite susceptible to the sins of alliteration. So I could not resist pointing out this great green tech resource site called MyGreenElectronics.org back-ended by the Consumer Electronics Association.

The site preaches the four “R’s” that we should all embrace when it comes to buying, managing and disposing of computer and electronics hardware. They are Reduce (as in energy use), Reuse (how can these things be redeployed in the future?), Recycle (can this thing be broken down easily and, for that matter, where?) and Rethink (which takes us back full circle to the buying part of the equation).

There are two great search engines on the site. One pulls up places you can recycle stuff based on your zip code, the other offers rating information on various vendors, sorted by different product types -- from amplifiers and baby monitors to cell phones and a range of computer hardware and peripherals. The ratings come from EPEAT (the Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool), which is used by the federal government to track the environmental profile of different products in terms of things like energy usage and the materials/components within.

Note to the site organizers: A section about software would be great, too. When you consider all the CDs kicking around people’s desk drawers, this would be a terrific place to provide information about the environmental benefits of software as a service.