Forgery League

I’ve been pondering getting a big second monitor - in particular for the studio, where old CRT monitors create heaps of magnetic interference and AC buzz. But which manufacturers are the best, in terms of environmental impact? I’m talking cutting down on the hazardous chemicals, design for easy disassembly and recycling, take-back policies and so forth.

A bit of web-searching turned up EPEAT, the United States EPA’s Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool. I note that no one in any of the categories yet meets EPEAT’s Gold standard.

Also, Greenpeace recently published their own Green Electronics Guide, and they’ve been pushing hard to get Apple to green its computers. (To me, they make sense as a target, since Mac devotees are something of a captive market, and may be a tad more likely to pay more for a greener computer.)

So the verdict? NEC’s MultiSync series and Apple’s Cinema Displays top EPEAT’s present list, but they’re ass-kickingly expensive for a monitor I’m not going to be using for high-end design. Dell’s more affordable, and as a company they’ve got one of the better environmental track records out there, so that’s how I’m leaning at present. Not that I’ll be dropping that much on anything for a while yet, but it’s good to know.