Green Perception Versus Green Reality

When it comes to "green" consumer electronic brands, consumer perception does not match reality. A GreenFactor study conducted by Strategic Oxygen and the PR agency Cohn & Wolfe found that Americans ranked Dell as the top "green" consumer electronics brand, followed by Apple, Hewlett-Packard and Microsoft. Hitachi, NEC and Nintendo were perceived as the least "green".


This graph shows peoples perception of how "green" a company is relative to their real "green" scores according to a Greenpeace rating sytsem. Greenpeace ranks electronics companies based on two criteria: 1) there ability to eliminate the use of hazardous substances during production and 2) whether or not they offer takeback and recycling programs for their products once they become obsolete.

Sony, Samsung and Nokia had the highest ratings. Surprising, considering these companies were ranked 14th, 13th and 7th, respectively, by consumers'. Greenpeace ranked Dell 12th, Apple 14th, HP 13th and Microsoft 17th, considerably lower than the perception consumers' had of them - especially in the case of Microsoft.

The results highlight two points: 1) there's a huge lack of awareness among consumers' and 2) some companies PR and marketing campaigns are better than others!

Google PowerMeter

The idea with the Powermeter is that if people knew how much electricity they were using to run individual electric appliances, they’d cut down use.
Google cites figures showing that regularly viewing real-time energy use prods people to cut electricity by 5 percent to 15 percent on average through behavioral changes. That could translate to saving $60 to $180 per year for a U.S. household with an annual average electricity bill of $1,200.

The PowerMeter will work on an iGoogle home page when it becomes available to the public sometime later this year.
According to The New York Times:
Google plans to enhance PowerMeter with “social” tools that will allow users to compare their electricity consumption with that of their neighbors or friends. And it plans to allow third parties to develop their own applications that would enhance its usefulness. A programmer, for instance, could create a tool that normalizes the data for variations in weather.
Even though it’s not ready for prime time, Google is providing info on the product in the hope of interesting potential partners.