Why a good green tablet is hard to find

There was a time not long ago when computer makers went out of their way to promote the green credentials — power efficiency, recyclability, environmental friendliness — of their newest PCs and laptops. With the latest generation of computing devices, particularly tablets, vendors aren’t playing the green card quite so prominently, if at all.

That might be cause for concern for organizations that want to remain on the cutting edge of technology yet who’ve pledged to purchase only lean, green machines for their workforce, be it for the sake of cutting costs, being better environmental stewards, or a combination of the two. Are vendors no longer focusing on sustainability as they rush to get the shiniest products to market? Or are the bars for measuring a product’s greenness not keeping up with the technology? Turns out it’s a little of both.

There are a couple of bars for measuring the “greenness” of today’s next-generation computing devices. One of them is the EPEAT (Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool) registry. Maintained by the GEC (Green Electronics Council), EPEAT is a searchable database of computer hardware that meets a strict set of environmental criteria. Among them, registered products comply with Energy Star; have reduced levels of cadmium, lead, and mercury; and are easier to upgrade and recycle. Products can receive a rating of Bronze, Silver, or Gold.

Strikingly, there is exactly one “tablet notebook” listed in the EPEAT registry: the Xplore iX104C5 DMSR, added on Dec. 11 of last year. There are no iPads, no Surfaces, no Streaks, no Kindles, no Nooks. How is it possible that not a single hardware vendor has managed to crank out a tablet that meets the minimum EPEAT criteria?

According to EPEAT’s communications rep Sarah O’Brien, “There is one barrier to registering ‘slates’ in EPEAT — the fact that there is currently no Energy Star specification that covers these products.”

Confusingly, Energy Star 5.0 covered tablets, but with Version 5.2, Energy Star reclassified tablets as handhelds. Here’s the exact text: “Slate computing devices, defined here as a type of computer lacking a physical keyboard, relying solely on touchscreen input, having solely a wireless network connection (e.g., Wi-Fi, 3G), and primarily powered from an internal battery (with connection to the mains for charging, not primary powering of the device) are considered handhelds and are not considered notebook computers. Consequently, slates are not eligible for this version of the Energy Star computer program.”

The problem, therefore, is that Energy Star is a required criterion for a machine to garner an EPEAT rating, “so this explicit exclusion of slates means they can’t currently be registered,” O’Brien said. “Notebook-type slates (the ones that have a slate type surface but are primarily conventional notebooks) can be registered as what we rather clumsily call ‘Tablet Notebooks,’ but this has not been a popular category.” Indeed, there’s only one tablet notebook listed.

The next version of Energy Star intends to include slates, according to O’Brien. The EPA is considering a ULEM (Ultra‐low Energy Mobile) Computer product classification that would include netbooks and tablets. In the meantime, she said that EPEAT is moving forward with research on slates and similar devices “to better understand how they can best be addressed within EPEAT’s rating system and product categories.”

Notably, EPEAT found itself embroiled in a bit of a firestorm not long ago when Apple threatened to stop using the registry entirely after its MacBook Pro with Retina Display initially failed to meet the registry’s minimum criteria. The brouhaha died out quickly enough once Apple reversed its decision to bail on EPEAT, and the device went on to earn an EPEAT Gold rating. EPEAT insisted it had not caved to Apple in granting the device a Gold rating. Even though the machine includes proprietary pentalobe screws that require special tools to undo them, it meets EPEAT’s disassembly criteria, which focus on recycling and shredding, not upgrading. “The test lab went through the process and reported that the products were all easy to disassemble with commonly available tools,” O’Brien said.

A second bar for assessing a computing device’s greenness comes from the website iFixit, whose engineers periodically break down machines to inspect how they’re constructed and to assess how easy they are to repair and upgrade. iFixit just published a convenient scorecard rating the reparability of 18 tablets, ranging from various Apple iPads to Microsoft Surfaces to Nooks and Kindles. The scores are determined based on how easily a device can be opened, repaired, and upgraded with non-proprietary tools and parts.

By iFixit’s reckoning, Apple’s and Microsoft’s tablets are the least repairable of the bunch: The iPad 2, 3, 4, and Mini all have reparability scores of 2 out of 10, generally due to the fact that “excessive amounts of adhesive holds everything in place” and the “high chance of cracking the glass during disassembly.” The Mini also suffers from “hidden screws [that] complicate disassembly.”

Meanwhile, the Microsoft Surface Pro received an abysmal reparability score of 1 out of 10 for containing “tons of adhesive [that] holds everything in place” and the fact that “opening the device risks shearing the display cables.” The Surface, meanwhile, earned a repairability score of 4 because it’s difficult to open and its LCD is fused to the front glass.

On the other end of the tablet-reparability spectrum is Dell; its XPS 10 is the only tablet on the list to have earned a score of 9 out of 10. It’s easy to open and remove the battery, plus it has color-coded screws and labeled cables, according to iFixit. Dell’s Streak earned a reparability score of 8, as did Amazon.com’s Kindle Fire, the Motorola Xoom, and the Samsung Galaxy Tab 2.

Green-minded organizations and individuals in the market for tablets and other next-gen mobile computing devices may need to work a little harder to find machines that meet their requirements because they won’t find one conveniently marked with an EPEAT or Energy Star sticker any time soon. However, buyers can press hardware manufactures on the green credentials of their wares — and pressure companies that are clearly falling behind to work a little harder.

This story, “Why a good green tablet is hard to find,” was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Get the first word on what the important tech news really means with the InfoWorld Tech Watch blog. For the latest developments in business technology news, follow InfoWorld.com on Twitter.