We were critical of Apple's environmental stance a couple of years ago, saying that the company was positioned to be a leader rather than a a foot-dragger. Since then, the company has made significant strides, such as improvements to its take-back recycling programs. On the downside, issues about its Chinese contract manufacturing operations have been slow to be resolved.

EPEAT® - "the definitive global registry for greener electronics" - simplifies its twenty-three required IEEE 1680 criteria and twenty-eight optional ones into a simple Bronze-Silver-Gold designation. EPEAT Gold models meet all required criteria and at least 75% of the optional ones. ~20* manufacturers are now offering over 1700* EPEAT Gold products registered for the United States. This is more than double the number we counted twenty-one months ago.

Much Green ICT focuses on computers: servers in the data center and desktops in the office. Don't forget that disk-based data storage, which can cost an organization $25/GB/month, also offers opportunities. Here's a look at the progress manufacturers and users have been making in recent years to manage data storage's energy consumption.

Desktops and workstations are still widely-used in enterprise computing, particularly for demanding applications, although some of these models are targeted to the consumer. Nine manufacturers are offering over 170 models in the EPEAT Gold database. Ace, All-In-One, Dell, HP, and Lenovo offer the most choices; Ace, Grace, Verdio, and Wipro are the latest to have products on one of these green rankings. BenQ and MDG no longer have desktops listed by any ratings systems, so they have been dropped from this table.

300+ EPEAT Gold displays offered in USA: LG and Samsung offer the most. No additional manufacturer has registered EPEAT Gold displays since we analyzed the EPEAT database six months ago six months ago. Then there were 200+ EPEAT Gold displays; the growth has come from existing participants.

The ars technica folks published this informative breakdown of server power consumption in 2007, credited to "Intel and EXP Critical Facilities":

Notebooks, including laptops and netbooks, is the most well-reviewed e-gear category. HP models are noted by all five sources; Apple and Toshiba by four. The EPEAT Gold database includes over 940 models for the US; Samsung, Sony and Toshiba offer the most.

Vertatique has been covering the issue of 'vampire' devices: e-gear that sucks power at night and other times when we think the gear is 'off'. As devices proliferate in the home and office, this becomes an increasing bigger energy drain, even as manufactures and regulators work to (slowly) reduce vampire consumption in some of them. Now, a semiconductor manufacturer says it has a zero-draw solution for one class of vampire devices: those ubiquitous bricks (chargers and adapters) into which we plug our e-gear. Freestyle describes its Watt Saver technology:

While much of the green computer focus worldwide is on laptops, UK companies are doing interesting things with desktops.

Aleutia offers low-power units that "are designed to easily connect to solar power and work in remote places." Case studies include Africa and Central Asia.

VeryPC promotes its Broadleaf desktop as "categorised as ‘Class Leader’ by DEFRA Quick Wins", "BFR, PVC and halogen free in line with ECMA-370, the environmental standard", "the only desktop PC to be endorsed by the Energy Saving Trust Recommended scheme". (More about Green ICT product standards in Europe.)

Lithium batteries are showing up in everything from personal e-gear to communications backup systems to next-gen electric cars. Will they become the next e-waste? And do you know the important distinction between recycling Li and Li-ion technology?