Late into the night of November 14, 1992, in a hotel room above the glittering Las Vegas streets, IBM designers raced against the clock to assemble a radical new personal computer. Unlike any previous computer, the diminutive PS/2 E was designed from the ground up to be a "green PC." Its case was manufactured from recyclable plastics. It sipped energy sparingly. It could be disassembled faster than a master sergeant can field-strip an M-16, and its parts could be reused or recycled. It was a monument to green computing-the idea that we can lighten the PC's effect on the environment by changing the ways we manufacture, buy, use, and discard them.

The PS/2 E was a show-stopper. It won Byte Magazine's best system of Comdex and went on to become the poster PC for the White House's Energy Star program. If nothing else, IBM's clout and commitment gave it the edge. "IBM is the 900-pound gorilla," Joel Makower, publisher of The Green Business Letter, said at the time. "They were one of the first companies off the block with an Energy Star computer, and that meant everyone had to do it." The green PC looked like the wave of the future.

Five years later, the next wave looks more like a ripple. A series of marketing missteps doomed the overpriced PS/2 E. Manufacturers who used to tout their green computers, green monitors, and green printers and boast of their green packaging and green corporate policies, hardly make a peep about environmental issues nowadays, reflecting public wariness of oft-overstated environmental claims. Even greenwashing-the practice of claiming spurious environmental benefits for products-is out of style, at least in advertising.

But the environmental problems associated with the PC haven't gone away. In some ways, they've gotten worse. And if you don't think they impact your business, think again.

Pollution. Manufacturing PCs and peripherals involves a mass of nasty chemicals that end up in our water, air, and landfills. Manufacturers' cleanup bills translate into higher product costs for consumers.

Power. Your energy bill gets a double-whammy from the electricity your PCs need to run and the extra air-conditioning you need to cool down your machines as they generate heat.

Paper consumption. Printers use a lot of paper. The demand puts pressure on dwindling forests and your supplies budget. Those manuals you never read cost trees and money, too.

Packaging. You pay for the excessive plastic, cardboard, and Styrofoam many manufacturers use to package computers and software. And these decidedly nonbiodegradable materials eventually contribute a fat layer to landfills.

Recycling or lack thereof. Finding new uses for an old PC isn't easy, but in the long run it can save you money. Besides, junking it makes pollution and landfill problems worse.

But don't panic. There's still hope for greener computing. We'll feed you the facts and show you how you can help save the planet and your budget, too.

PCs Hit Critical Mass The PC's impact on the environment is in many ways a function of the explosive growth of PC sales. Consider these numbers.

There are an estimated 324 million PCs worldwide, according to the 1996 Computer Industry Almanac. (About 75 percent of those machines are currently in use; the rest are warehoused.) Most of these machines were built in the last 10 years.

According to a July 1997 Dataquest report, computer sales grew 19 percent worldwide this year, and the research firm expects double-digit growth to continue well into the next decade. New PC shipments in 2002 will exceed 150 million, a number equal to the entire installed base of PCs worldwide in 1992.

To fuel that growth, more than 100 new silicon chip fabrication plants (fabs) are being built around the world. In some developing countries, computer-related manufacturing is the most important growth industry. By the year 2000, there will be between 200 and 300 fabs worldwide.

Toxic Shock All those plants add up to a massive pollution problem. In fact, PC and electronics manufacturers use more kinds of listed toxic substances than almost any other industry. So perhaps it's not hard to understand why most companies don't release information on the subject. The only publicly available study, from chip maker Texas Instruments, reveals some gory details. Producing a single, eight-inch silicon wafer-enough for about 250 Pentium CPUs-uses 4,267 cubic feet of bulk gases, 3,787 gallons of waste water, 27 pounds of chemicals, 29 cubic feet of hazardous gases, and 3,023 gallons of deionized water and generates nine pounds of hazardous waste. A single plant can produce 5,000 wafers a week.

Where does it all go? Underground, mostly, and that's where the trouble starts. Silicon Valley alone contains 29 subterranean storage sites, brimming with hazardous waste from chip and printed circuit board (PCB) manufacturing. These sites fall under the EPA's Superfund program, which was designed to clean up hazardous waste areas created by manufacturing and other industries before they contaminate surrounding soil or taint wells. Sadly, such contaminations have already occurred. And though the EPA has spent billions of your tax dollars on cleanup, they've barely made a dent in the problem. The vast majority of Silicon Valley's Superfund sites continue to be a threat to the area's water supply and soil.

Prodded by the EPA and industry watchdogs like the San Jose-based Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition (SVTC), the industry has succeeded in cleaning up certain aspects of chip making. For example, in the early 1990s, the PCB industry used tons of ozone layer-depleting chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) to clean boards. Today, a cleaner and cheaper process-based on soap and water, of all things-is used in most plants. The downside is it's harder to remove lead from the soapy water effluent.

Unfortunately, chip makers still have a long way to go, according to SVTC. Companies are less likely to seek green solutions and more likely to find legal ways to evade regulation. One way is to build fabs overseas, like in Southeast Asia, where environmental regulations are lax or nonexistent. Another approach is to renegotiate environmental regulations here at home. The Project XL Facility Performance Agreement (FPA) between the EPA and Intel Corporation in Chandler, Arizona, is what the SVTC calls a sweetheart deal. It streamlines clean air and water laws covering Intel's Fab 12 facility there. According to the SVTC, it allows Intel to avoid much current regulation, construct new fabs without proper permitting, and introduce new potentially toxic chemicals without continuous monitoring.

The Project XL agreement is yet another episode in the struggle to balance business interests with environmental concerns. According to Intel, the Project XL agreement "represents a dramatic step forward in bringing industry, community activists, government regulators, and environmental nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) together to find more efficient ways to improve the environment as well as our system for managing the environment." The SVTC sees another side to the story. "The semiconductor industry has been in the forefront of the push for deregulation," says Ted Smith, SVTC executive director. "Their time-to-market concerns are so much greater than in most other industries, they have been able to argue that if it takes too long to get permits, they'll take their business elsewhere. Governments at every level, from federal to local, are competing to see who can deregulate fastest. It's the race to the bottom."

The issue is complicated even for experts in environmental law and chip fabrication processes. What's clear is that as long as chip manufacturing involves hazardous materials and the market for chips grows, the environmental hazard will grow along with it. "Nobody is looking at the overall global impact," says Smith. "When people ask me today what is the greatest environmental stressor, it's the sheer size and speed of this growth. It is overwhelming the regulatory environment."

Meanwhile, we all pay for pollution in the form of health problems. And the cost of a company's cleanup efforts shows up in the price tag of that PC you buy. What can ordinary citizens and companies do? Make noise. If there's anything that scares a company more than losing money, it's bad publicity-and class action lawsuits. On a local level, identify the Superfund sites in your area. The EPA's Web site publishes a list (www.epa.gov/superfnd/). Find out what, if anything, is being done to clean them up. To target the computer industry specifically, support grass-roots organizations like the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition, whose Silicon Principles offer guidelines for running an environmentally friendly business. (Check them out at www.igc.apc.org/svtc/siprinc.htm.)

Power Mismanagement PC manufacturing is a big problem that will take time to change. But there has been progress in other areas, where you can make an immediate difference. One such area is power consumption. Computer equipment puts a big drain on the nation's power grids and your wallet. If we consider the PC power-consumption figures provided by the EPA and the Energy Department to be typical, the world's 324 million operating PCs will consume an estimated 332 billion kilowatt-hours (kwh) in 1997. That's enough to keep California's 11 million households running for more than three years. On a personal level, an office PC left on eight hours a day consumes 690kwh annually, ringing up a $55 bill. Multiply that by the 10, 20, or more PCs you manage and you can see how PC energy use impacts your bottom line.

The problem for the environment is just as serious. Generating 332 billion kwh of electricity requires the equivalent of burning some 9 billion gallons of fuel oil, which releases 354 million pounds of CO2 into the atmosphere. Does that sound like a lot? Those numbers don't include the energy needed to cool offices warmed by the heat generated by operating computers-another expense, another source of pollution.

The growing power needs of personal computers led the EPA to develop its Energy Star Program in the early 1990s. The goal of this initiative between the government and the computer industry was to design computer systems that consume 30 watts or less when inactive. On Earth Day, 1993, President Clinton gave the program a big boost when he signed an executive order requiring the federal government to buy only Energy Star-compliant computers. Two months later, Al Gore held an Energy Star press conference featuring 22 manufacturers of PCs, monitors, and printers committed to the program.

Today, Energy Star is the national standard. According to the EPA, as of last year, 70 percent of all new PCs and nearly 100 percent of all PC monitors sold had power-management capability. The EPA originally estimated that by the year 2000 these new computers could save some 25 billion kwh of energy-the annual output of 10 coal-fired power plants or the electricity needed to power Vermont and New Hampshire for a year.

But Energy Star machines can save energy, money, and pollution only if their power management features are enabled. Unfortunately, they often aren't.

"According to our studies, only 10 percent to 20 percent of the PCs in use are properly enabled for power savings," says Mary Ann Piette, staff scientist for the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Energy Analysis Program. An Energy Star-compliant PC may ship from the manufacturer with power management disabled by default. That leaves the users to figure out how to do it and most don't bother.

"It's also common for MIS guys to turn off power management globally in office PCs because they believe it interferes with performance," Piette says. And the MIS crews may have a point. "Machines that aren't properly configured can spin down the disk too often," she says. "Or the settings might not work with certain types of networks. The trick is not to turn off all power management but only those features that cause trouble." For instance, if your PC is often working on something when you're away, such as an Internet download, disable the system's doze feature, which may interrupt what your machine is doing. But enable the monitor's power-saving features, Piette urges, because this component uses the most energy.

Another problem is add-ons. Video accelerators, Ethernet cards, and SCSI cards may push a system's power use in sleep mode to more than 30 watts, the Energy Star maximum. Piette recommends that manufacturers publish accurate power numbers for their devices on the Web so vendors and consumers can more easily gauge power needs. They should also put better information in their manuals on how to configure power management features. For instance, says Piette, "Compaq has done a nice job of putting online help in their systems, and others should follow suit."

Just remember-every kilowatt-hour saved through energy conservation is $.08 you're not paying to the power company. It's also one of the fastest roads to greener computing. How can you achieve this green budget bliss? Learn how to use your PC's power-management features. (See the "Power Management with Windows" sidebar on page 52 for a step-by-step guide.) Turn off your PC and peripherals if you're planning to be away from your machine for more than an hour. Or at least power down your monitor, printer, and lights; they use more watts than the PC itself. Buy internal modems and storage devices instead of external ones. Share peripherals like printers and fax/modems instead of putting one on every person's desk. Finally, when you shop for new computer equipment, buy only Energy Star-compliant products. Check the specs and choose equipment that draws less power.

PC Recycling Lags Say you've solved your power-consumption problem by buying a brand-new, totally Energy Star PC. Now what do you do with your old machine? If everyone tossed the 324 million PCs currently in use, they'd pack a landfill one acre square and 6.7 miles deep-nearly as deep as the Mariana Trench. But one person's trash is another's treasure. Computer recyclers who dismantle PCs for their parts, clearinghouses that redistribute donated computers, and frugal companies that find new uses for old equipment all help keep PCs out of the dump. But are many people doing this?

Not really. Greg Pitts, director of the Microelectronics and Computer Technology Corporation (MCC), an industry research and development consortium in Austin, Texas, estimates that roughly "75 percent of obsolete electronics are in storage, less than 15 percent are sent to landfills and incinerators, about 7 percent are resold, and only 3 percent recycled." Jim Contardi, senior vice president of sales and marketing for Aurora Electronics in San Diego, one of the country's largest commercial PC recyclers, says there's not enough volume to make recycling a big business. "There are maybe five or six guys who do what we do, and it's been that way for a while," he says. "It's extremely specialized, and no one has found a business model to make PC recycling really grow." Aurora recycles about 10,000 PCs per year. Two-thirds arrive as backwash from the retail channel; they're unsellable "B-goods" that have been returned by consumers within the warranty period. One-third of the mix is made up of used PCs discarded by corporations.

Contardi believes that the driving motivation to recycle PCs is not environmental or even economic, but legal. "A major concern is the logo plate or capital asset tag that identifies where the machine comes from. If [people] don't take precautions on how the machine is disposed of [by sending it to a company like Aurora that removes the tag and other evidence of the PC's ownership], they might be required by the government to clean up the landfill where it's dumped."

PCs sent in for recycling are getting alarmingly younger, too. While recyclers handle a high percentage of older systems, including some ancient PCs and XTs, in the past year they've seen a fair number of units that are less than two years old. And that's not just because of technological obsolescence. Steven Wyatt, director of business development for Computer Recycling/Computers & Education in Santa Clara, Calif., says the PC price wars have led to cost-conscious "value-engineering" that shortens product lifetimes. This trend is most noticeable in monitors. "Monitor manufacturers keep pushing down the price," he says, "and some engineering compromises are being made. An increasing number of new monitors fail." This trend toward faster obsolescence means PCs could head for the dump even earlier in the years to come.

The PC recycling problem has some bright spots. Pitt notes that manufacturers as a whole are marking more of the plastic parts for recycling. Wyatt adds that more and more of the plastics used in computers are virgin materials, which are easier to recycle. This means it could be easier for you to dispose of your new PC responsibly.

Wyatt's organization also hopes to intercept PCs on their way to the dump and give them a new life. Computer Recycling/Computers & Education fixes donated PCs and then channels them to schools and nonprofit organizations. It also runs computer education programs for vocational schools, community organizations, and work-to-welfare projects. Companies that donate computer equipment save on storage space and get a nice tax write-off. The company also strips PCs of their salable parts, like memory chips, sending the rest to full-fledged recyclers like Aurora for final dismantling.

Do you want to nudge up those low recycling numbers? Don't warehouse or toss your PCs. Reuse old systems where you can; many can do duty on your network as print and modem servers. Donate the rest to organizations like Computer Recycling, the East-West Educational Foundation, the National Christina Foundation, or a local public school. If the PCs are good only for their raw materials, contact a computer recycler like Aurora.

Consuming Cartridges Another place where recycling can make a difference is at your printer. Given that sales of laser printers have nearly quadrupled over the last five years, it's not surprising that toner cartridges are a major expense for many businesses. They also add to landfills unnecessarily when they're just thrown away. Fortunately, you can keep your cartridges out of the dump and save some money at the same time.

Some larger printer vendors maintain their own recycling programs. Estimates of the rate of toner cartridge recycling range from about 15 percent to nearly 50 percent. For example, Xerox claims its customers recycled about half the cartridges they bought in 1994. Hewlett Packard's recently announced Planet Partners toner cartridge-recycling program aims to simplify the recycling process. Each toner cartridge box includes a prepaid UPS return shipping label, a bulk-return option, and a multilingual recycling guide. Consumers drop spent cartridges into the packaging, slap on the label, and leave the box at a UPS pick-up point or Mail Boxes, Etc.

Why should HP embark on a major promotional effort for something as mundane as cartridge recycling? Because it's good business. Under HP's existing program, more than 12 million cartridges have gotten a free round-trip since 1990. For the price of a UPS contract, HP buys access to a steady supply of its own cartridge parts and high-quality raw materials it can sell to other industries. All the while it makes good on its corporate mandate to operate in an environmentally responsible manner.

Sending your toner cartridge back to the manufacturer is free and easy. But what the manufacturers don't tell you is you can save even more money if you have your toner cartridge remanufactured. Your corner stationery or computer store can help you arrange this. Local and mail-order refurbishers replace any worn parts of the cartridge, refill it with toner, and send it back to you for a price that's 30 percent to 50 percent less than buying a brand-new cartridge. Just remember to avoid the "drill and fill" businesses that simply punch a hole

in the cartridge and pour in toner without checking the cartridge's condition. Look for recyclers registered with the International Cartridge Recyclers Association (ICRA), which sets professional standards for recyclers. A final tip: Mark your cartridge somewhere inconspicuous with a scratch or grease pencil. Do this to tally how many times you've recycled it and to make sure you get back the same unit from the recycler.

When the cartridge is worn out (after about six refurbishings), it's time to send it back to the original manufacturer. Just remember that most printer manufacturers, who make a lot of money on toner cartridge sales (and have some legitimate, if perhaps overstated, concerns about the risks of reusing cartridges), will void your warranty if you use a refilled or remanufactured cartridge in your printer.

Paper Struggles Another green-computing issue that involves your printer is-you guessed it-paper. According to the EPA's 1995 Waste Characterization Report, paper is the largest component of the United States' municipal solid waste burden. It accounts for 39 percent of the waste generated before recycling and about 33 percent of the waste in landfills. Computers haven't helped. In fact, they've increased paper use. Applying the green guidelines of reduce, reuse, recycle can not only save trees and landfill space but trim your office paper budget. In the longer run, reducing demand helps keep the price of paper reasonable for everybody.

Cutting back on paper use involves breaking some old habits and making some new ones. First of all, reduce the number of print jobs you do. Check your work so you don't make mistakes that force you to reprint, don't print multiple drafts unless you need to, don't print a page of information when you can scribble the one item you really need on a scratch pad, and so forth. Second, ask your MIS department to disable the feature that compels network printers to output a cover sheet for every print job. You can also cut paper use by publishing documents on your company's network or intranet. Documents that get updated frequently, such as phone directories, procedures manuals, calendars of events, and the like are the first and best candidates, but any document that needs to be viewed by a large group would qualify.

A fast way to cut your paper bill in half is to print on both sides of a page (duplex printing). You can buy a duplex unit that attaches to your printer and prints on both sides automatically. This process may slow down print jobs, but it will quickly cut your paper use in half. If you don't have a duplexer, turn the sheets over and print on the other side. Just let the paper cool before putting it back in the tray. If MIS doesn't go for either method, at least you can collect unused printed sheets for use as scratch pads. In fact, you can have them bound into notepads by your local copy center.

Finally, help keep used paper out of landfills by buying office papers with a high post-consumer recycled content. It's easy to find recycled papers these days. The 1997 "Annual Guide to Environmentally Sound Papers," a survey of recycled paper products published by Conservatree Information Services, lists nearly 500 products. Post-consumer recycled papers match the quality, durability, and sometimes the price of virgin stock. The blue recycling bins you'll find in most companies today help supply a steady stream of quality recycled paper to the paper industry, which now has the plant capacity to de-ink, repulp, and produce quality papers with a high percentage of recycled material.

But while the range of eco-papers available in the United States is steadily increasing, market forces have conspired to keep the recycled paper industry in turmoil. "In the past three years, at least 10 new, high-grade, de-inked pulp mills opened in the U.S.," says Susan Kinsella in her introduction to the 1997 "Annual Guide to Environmentally Sound Papers." "Unfortunately," she continues, "this happened during a period when the price for wastepaper used to make de-inked pulp was at an all-time high." That gave foreign pulp manufacturers the opportunity to enter the market with cheaper virgin pulp. "As a result of all these factors," she says, "the new mills making recycled pulp are struggling."

The recycled-paper business has also had spotty luck wooing big business customers. While you can find everything from fine-coated papers to Post-It notes with post-consumer content, commodity office papers used in copiers and laser printers haven't caught on with everyone. The Recycled Paper Coalition (RPC), a consortium of businesses dedicated to promoting recycling and recycled papers in their own organizations, reported that in 1996 demand for recycled paper was up only slightly from previous years, and it was only for papers made from plain, white, office paper. The market for lower-grade papers made from newspaper and other content remained weak.

Although recycled paper has a long way to go before it's the norm in American businesses, organizations like the RPC show how companies can work together to make large-scale changes. Members of the RPC include Bank of America, Chevron, and Hewlett-Packard. All the member companies pledge to make recycling and the use of recycled papers an integral part of their businesses. The Coalition started in 1992 with 16 members; today it has 216. A 1996 survey of RPC members shows their recycling policies kept 230,000 tons of paper out of landfills. The RPC says that's enough paper "to fill ... a football field to a depth of 430 feet."

Keeping on the Green Track Green computing appears to be going through a period of retrenchment. Some companies sincerely pursue environmentally responsible practices. Others pay lip service while privately working to undermine them. Most of the important green computing technologies and systems have been worked out (except in manufacturing, where technological advances are still needed to solve pollution problems), but we're hardly using them. Without grassroots support for power management, recycling, cleaner chip manufacturing, and other green programs, we can hardly expect the computer industry to show much enthusiasm. But consider the payoffs of greener computing. Cleaner air, water, and soil result in better public health. And reusing resources lowers costs instead of driving up the prices of virgin supplies. You can do your part by fostering greener practices at your office and spreading the word to your colleagues and friends. Green computing isn't just good for the Earth-it's good for business.

© 1997 Steven Anzovin. All rights reserved.
Steve Anzovin, a freelance writer and editor, is the author of "The Green PC, Second Edition" (from McGraw-Hill) and a contributing editor to MacAddict magazine. You can reach him at anzovin@javanet.com.

Power Management with Windows

Chances are you're not realizing the benefits of the power management features built into your PC. And it's no wonder; some manufacturers haven't made it easy to utilize them. Here's a quick primer on getting your Energy Star machine to do its money- and power-saving job.

Note: Almost all of the latest monitors come with power management software, and most conform to the Video Electronics Standards Association's (VESA) display power management system (DPMS) protocol. A DPMS-compliant monitor should manage power properly in any PC with a DPMS-compliant video card. You can adjust the monitor settings in Windows 95's Display control panel by clicking the Screen Saver tab.

Windows 95

Windows 95 supports Advanced Power Management, but how you set it depends on the version of Windows 95 you're using. These steps refer to Windows 95 version 4.00.950a:

Select Start*Settings*Control Panel and double-click the System icon. Click the Device Manager tab, scroll all the way down, and double-click the System Devices icon, and then the Advanced Power Management support icon. Click the Settings tab and check the Enable Power Management Support box. Leave the other boxesÑForce APM 1.0 Mode, Disable Intel SL Support, and Disable Power Status PollingÑunchecked. Click OK and restart Windows 95 to have the new settings take effect.

These steps refer to Windows 95 version 4.00.950B:

Select Start*Settings*Control Panel and double-click the Power icon. Click the Power tab and check the box labeled Allow Windows to Manage Power Use on This Computer. Click the Advanced button; click the Troubleshooting tab; and make sure the Force APM 1.0 Mode, Disable Intel SL Support, and Disable Power Status Polling boxes are unchecked. Click OK and restart Windows 95.

Windows 3.1 and Windows NT

Sorry, there are no direct power management capabilities in Windows 3.1. You'll need to set system power management features in your PC's CMOS Setup program. (Of course, you can use a screen saver program like After Dark to put a DPMS video setup to sleep.) The same is true for Windows NT, except for versions designed to run on notebooks.

Setting Power Management in BIOS

Because there are so many different BIOSs in use today, we can't tell you exactly how to configure yours here. But these are the typical steps to follow: Turn on the monitor before turning on the PC. At boot-up, you'll probably get an on-screen message telling you which hot key (such as Delete, F2, or Ctrl+Alt+F1) to press to get into the PC's CMOS Setup. Press it quickly before the memory test begins.

Look for the Power Management menu, which may be a submenu. (Note that preÐEnergy Star systems don't have a Power Management menu.) Use the arrow keys to make selections and confirm your choices. Pressing the Escape key will return you to the main BIOS setup screen.

Check out the top few lines in the Power Management screen. You will likely see the options listed below. Our suggested settings follow.

Power Management: Set to On. User-Defined: Set to On. PM Control by APM: Set to On for Windows 95. VGA Adapter Type (acts as an on/off switch for the monitor's power management features): Set to Green or On. Doze Mode (reduces power after a few seconds and wakes up quickly), Standby or Sleep Mode (powers down the monitor and spins down the hard disk), and Suspend Mode (cuts all but a trickle of power to the monitor and CPU): existing settings are probably OK. Disable Doze if your machine must perform long-running, calculation-intensive tasks like 3-D rendering. HDD Power Down: Set to 10 minutes for new, fast drives or 20 minutes for old, slower drives. IRQ switches: Set the IRQs for the keyboard (often IRQ 1), modem (often IRQ 3), network (often IRQ 11), and mouse (often IRQ 12) to On. Note: Enabling CPU power-management features may (in a few cases) interfere with LAN or Internet communications and possibly cause data loss. Enabling only your monitor's power-management features should cause fewer problems. This piece is adapted from "User Guide to Power Management in PCs and Monitors" by Bruce Nordman, Mary Ann Piette, Kris Kinney, and Carrie Webber. The full text of the guide is posted at eande.lbl.gov/eap/bea/.

Green PC Resources on the Web

Are you looking for the latest news and information about computing and the environment? Check out these Web sites.

ConservatreeWeb
www.conservatree.com

This is the official Web site of Conservatree Information Services. It contains cutting-edge environmental information on recycled, tree-free, and chlorine-free printing and writing papers. It publishes the "Annual Guide to Environmentally Sound Papers."

Environmental Protection Agency Energy Star Programs
www.epa.gov/energystar.html

Here you'll find everything you ever wanted to know about Energy Star, including an up-to-date list of every product and manufacturer certified as Energy StarÐcompliant. There's also information on Green Lights, the Energy Star Buildings program, and other federal, energy-reduction initiatives.

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Energy Analysis Program, Buildings Energy Data Group
eande.lbl.gov/eap/bea/

This site provides detailed studies of equipment energy use. Download the invaluable user guide on PC power management.

Microelectronics and Computer Technology Corporation (MCC)
www.mcc.com/projects/env/

This research and consulting group provides guidance in environmental business decisions to the electronics industry. Many full-text research documents are available online, from life-cycle studies of the PC to alternative PCB manufacturing processes.

Rechargeable Battery Recycling Corporation
www.rbrc.com
352/376-5135

This international, nonprofit service organization was created in 1994 by the rechargeable power industry. The site has a lot of information on computer battery recycling programs and how to make batteries last as long as possible.

Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition/Campaign for Responsible Technology
www.svtc.org/svtc
408/287-6707

The SVTC has the most comprehensive information base available on the environmental impact of PC and electronics manufacturing processes around the world. Look here for information on labor and community issues within the industry as well.

Computer Donation/Recycling Resources

Aurora Electronics
619/552-1213

Computer Recycling/Computers & Education
408/327-1800

National Christina Foundation
800/274-7846

Recycled Paper Coalition
415/985-5568