What is it?
EPEAT is an environmental procurement tool designed to help institutional purchasers in the public and private sectors evaluate, compare and select desktop computers, notebook computers and monitors based on their environmental attributes. At the same time it helps manufacturers promote environmentally preferable products. EPEAT is the implementation of the IEEE 1680 Standard for Environmental Assessment of Personal Computer products (including laptop and desktop computers, and monitors).

Why is it important?
Electronic products are a part of everyday life, and continued and expanded use of electronic information and communications technologies is likely a key to achieving global sustainability. However, with our current industrial technology and infrastructure electronic products also have unacceptably high social and environmental impacts. Electronic products often:

a. Are very resource intensive to manufacture;
b. Contain significant amounts of toxic and environmentally sensitive materials;
c. Use electricity inefficiently;
d. Have a relatively short useable lifespan;
e. Are inefficiently and/or ineffectively recovered and recycled.

To help alleviate these problems, many organizations are striving to purchase environmentally preferable products and they are using their purchasing power to make products greener. However, until recently it has been very difficult for most purchasers to determine what products are environmentally better than others. EPEAT is an easy-to-use system to help purchasers deal with the technical complexities of determining which products are actually preferable.

How Can I find an EPEAT product?
A searchable listing of EPEAT registered products is maintained on a Product Registry. See http://www.epeat.net/

More information?
EPEAT is a project of the Green Electronics Council. For more information, contact the Green Electronics Council.