Greenpeace has released their 12th “Guide to Greener Gadgets” and some of the results are not pretty. They have called out HP, Lenovo and Dell for backtracking on their commitment to eliminate PVC plastic and brominated flame retardants (BFRs) from their products by the end of 2009…even though it’s not the end of 2009 yet. However, since it is already July, I am guessing that their product lines are already designed and built for the rest of the year – and they still include PVC plastic and BFR’s. According to Greenpeace:

Staff at HP’s Dutch headquarters were greeted on arrival by Greenpeace activists confronting them with pictures of the pollution HP’s toxic products cause in Asia and Africa. The PC giant has already received a public reminder of the need to reprioritise toxic chemical phase out, when activists returned ‘toxic laptops’ to the company’s Chinese headquarters on July 1.

PVC is the single most environmentally damaging of all plastics, and can form dioxin, a known carcinogen, when burned (i.e. when people throw their computers in a landfill, which many still do). In the new report, Apple’s new computer lines are virtually free of PVC and completely BFR-free, which “demonstrates the technical feasibility and supply-chain readiness of producing alternatives to these hazardous substances.” So really, there is no reason why every computer maker cannot meet the standards that they had promised to meet.