Core77

EPEAT: LEED for gadgets

By Core Jr - December 22, 2009

in Tech

EPEAT, an eco-label for consumer electronics, has been around for a long time, existing behind the scenes as a business-to-business eco-rating system helping giants like the U.S. Federal government purchase low impact computers. Now, EPEAT is going business-to-consumer, making their bronze, silver and gold ratings publicly available as a reference point for shoppers—for example, did you know that Naoto Fukasawa's Go laptop for Samsung (pictured above) ranks high on the eco-friendly scale?

One of their main partners in implementing this is Amazon, who just enabled searching and sorting by EPEAT ratings in their electronics store. It's a little hard to find—each device will be listed as "EPEAT registered," but to see the real rating, you'll have to look under the Green category in your search results. Sounds complicated, but this is brand new and we imagine they're still ironing out the kinks. Here's a screenshot: