Talk Techie To Me: The 2011 Consumer Electronics Show

Date: January 4, 2011 | Category: Lifestyle, Media, Tech

Post by Caitlin Bristol, sponsored by Nokia.

From Wednesday to Saturday (Jan 5-8, 2011), Nokia is sponsoring ecofabulous' coverage of the world's largest trade show, the annual Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, NV. As ecofabulous' Creative Director, I'll be on the ground with Nokia as one of their CES Show Ambassadors, covering the latest and greatest in green tech. Make sure to follow @caitbristol and @ecofabulous for up-to-date info on what's hot in the world of sustainable electronics. So, what's ecofabulous about a large electronics show? And why are we excited to have Nokia as a sponsor? There are a plethora of amazing resources, companies and products available that would not be as accessible to such a wide reach of people, without electronics. Just look around you - computers, cell phones, tvs - we're surrounded, and we're not trying to say that this is necessarily a bad thing. But, we think it's the info and accessibility people really want, not all the hazardous materials and health concerns. Annie Leonard explains it pretty well in her short video about The Story of Electronics: [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sW_7i6T_H78[/youtube] As you can see, the electronics industry has a huge impact on our health, the health of those we care about, and the health of the planet. I'll be at CES to look for companies and products that have moved away from the "designed for the dump" mentality - the hard to upgrade, easy to break, and impractical to repair electronics that many of us are used to. Leonard mentions a simple rule of production to follow that makes all this high-tech/ eco-friendly jargon understandable: toxics in, toxics out (as in pvc, mercury or flame retardants - eek!). So I'm out to find products that are longer lasting, less toxic, and more recyclable, as well as to share companies that adhere to the idea of extended producer responsibility (EPR), also called "producer takeback," where it's the manufacturers - not the government or consumers - that take responsibility for the environmentally safe management of their product when it is no longer useful or discarded. We're excited to have Nokia as a sponsor of my trip and coverage of CES because they are one electronics company that has made some significant strides in the right direction. For two years in a row, the Dow Jones Indexes have named Nokia the world's most sustainable technology company. Here are a few of the things about Nokia that impressed us:

• Powering their operations with 35% renewable energy
• 100% of phones are constructed of materials that can be recovered and used to make new products or generate energy, plus Nokia was the first in the industry to use bio paints and recycled metals in their phones
• 100% of phones are free of BFR (brominated flame retardants), RFR (chlorinated and brominated compounds and antimony trioxide), PVC, mercury, lead and many other substances of concern that used to be prominently found in electronics
• They operate the largest voluntary mobile phone recycling scheme in the world - in 2009 Nokia collected 4.6 million phones through their own take-back program

From their recycling programs to their commitment to produce phones based on life cycle assessment (minimizing the environmental impact at every stage of operation - from production to use to end of life), ecofabulous is excited to be attending CES with a company that's leading the way in sustainable initiatives for the technology sector. So stay tuned, and remember to follow me at @caitbristol and @ecofabulous - I'll be reporting live from the energy efficient N8 phone I received from Nokia. *Photo credit: Nokia

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