Not Easy Being Green

So, yes, I am thrilled when I hear vendors touting manufacturing or remarketing or recycling policies that make sense. Just this week, as an example, NEC Display Solutions will disclose that it has earned itself a silver certification from EPEAT, otherwise known as the Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool. This is essentially an online site where procurement managers can go and compare ratings for desktops, notebooks, displays and integrated systems. The ratings cover the products' level of cadmium, lead and mercury as well as their energy efficiency. There are three levels of rating, Bronze, Silver and Gold. (To date, no manufacturer has earned a Gold rating in any category.)

Hewlett-Packard is also coloring itself a deeper shade of green by pledging by 2010 to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from HP-owned and HP-leased facilities by 15 percent compared with this year's levels. Moreover, it will work with the World Economic Forum to define better energy efficiency measurements for its technology.

So, the big question I have for these and other vendors: What about your channel partners? I have heard barely a peep out of any major high-tech hardware vendor about how it is helping sellers and recommenders of their technologies assess the green impact and use that to close solution sales. And what about remarketing and disposal programs that take aged equipment out of commission and either recycle it responsibly or get it into the hands of nonprofits or small businesses—here or abroad—that may have a use for it?

White Palms Technology, HoHoKus, N.J., was founded earlier this year for this express purpose. It takes older systems out of service, scrubs them to make sure they meet various privacy and security compliance regulations and gets them back out into the field for a second life. Two local VARs have partnered to offer White Palms' service as a deal differentiator.

Certainly, asset disposition is nothing new, but White Palms CEO Peter Sierra (a former import/export exec) says global interest in technology plus new environmental laws have made this a very different climate than even a year ago. He's seeing green, despite little help from the vendors.

Should vendors color their channel programs green? HEATHER CLANCY, Editor at CRN, welcomes e-mail at [email protected].