December 26, 2007
Federal Register Publishes EPEAT
The Department of Defense, NASA and the General Services Administration jointly detailed an interim rule on the use of the EPEAT – Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool – in the Federal Register on December 26, and they are accepting comments on the proposal through February 25.
Last January, President Bush signed an executive order requiring 95% of all federal electronic purchases to be EPEAT compliant if an EPEAT standard was available. While that order set a direction for federal agencies, putting it into action required amendments to the Federal Acquisition Regulation purchasing standards. The acquisition councils for civilian agencies and the Defense Department have now agreed on the needed changes to the standards, according to the December 26 Federal Register notice.
EPEAT is a three-tiered rating system developed by the Zero Waste Alliance and administered by the Green Electronics Council. Under EPEAT, qualifying desktop systems, laptops and monitors are awarded gold, silver and bronze ratings based on how well they meet 51 environmental criteria, such as ease of disassembly and the lack of paints or coatings that aren’t compatible with recycling or reuse.
Products are required to conform to 23 of the criteria to get a bronze rating. Earning a silver or gold designation is dependent on meeting more stringent EPEAT standards, such as having 90% of the materials in a system be reusable or recyclable or using batteries that are free of lead, cadmium and mercury.
The federal government has a total installed base of 6.7 million desktops and laptops across civilian and military agencies, and it buys about 2.2 million new systems annually. A number of major agencies are already using EPEAT, including NASA, the EPA and the Department of Homeland Security.
Private companies are now adopting EPEAT as well. For instance, the health maintenance organization Kaiser Permanente said in October that over the past year, it had purchased 55,271 desktop computers, 57,165 monitors and more than 9,600 laptops that met the EPEAT criteria.
For more information, please contact info@isdf.org.