Lenovo Commits to Green Design and Energy Efficiency

Lenovo announced that more than 25 of its Think-branded business and Idea-branded consumer PCs meet the new Energy Star Version 5.0 specification for computers, which goes into effect on July 1, 2009. Energy Star, a joint program of the US Environmental Protection Agency and the US Department of Energy, provides a system to rate the energy efficiency of various products. Lenovo said its fleet of Energy Star 5.0 certified PCs adhere to various standards including power management and on-mode power consumption requirements.

Lenovo added that it is committed to providing customers greener options throughout the lifecycle of their PCs, starting with using recycled content. According to the company, it leads the PC industry in offering the most PC products using post-consumer recycled materials. In 2008, Lenovo used more than 2.2 million pounds of post-consumer recycled plastics in its PCs. This contributes to more than 60 Lenovo products being rated Gold by the Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool, the company said.

Lenovo said it also offers bulk packaging at no cost for customers with large scale rollouts of laptop or desktop PCs such as universities and large enterprises. Bulk packaging can save up to more than four pounds of materials per PC, so a deployment of 5,000 ThinkCentre desktops, for example, could save nearly 22,000 pounds in materials, a significant waste reduction. To supplement this effort, the company is also using up to 100 percent recycled cushioning materials in select ThinkPad laptop, ThinkCentre desktop and ThinkVision monitor packaging. In addition, it is transitioning the IdeaPad S10e netbook packaging to a smaller, reduced-dye box to help minimize waste.

In addition, Lenovo is making it easy for customers to recycle their unwanted, end-of-life PCs. The Lenovo Eco Take Back Program, currently available to customers in the US, allows consumers to recycle any Lenovo or IBM product for free and receive money back on any brand of PC that has residual value. For business customers, the company offers asset recovery services to provide computer take-back, data destruction, refurbishment and recycling.

www.lenovo.com