Greener gadgets from Belgium

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Our ever-increasing reliance on electronic gadgets comes with certain environmental side-effects. Those gadgets often contain all kinds of things that are potentially harmful to the environment. It’s also a tough industry to evaluate when it comes to fair trade practices. We’re going to hear how one small company in Belgium is trying to address both of those issues. The World’s Technology Correspondent Clark Boyd reports from Brussels. (photo: Clark Boyd) Download MP3

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LISA MULLINS: I’m Lisa Mullins and this is The World. Our ever-increasing reliance on electronic gadgets comes with environmental side-effects. Those gadgets often contain all kinds of things that are potentially harmful to the environment. The electronics industry is also a tough one to evaluate when it comes to fair trade practices. We’re going to hear how one small company in Belgium is trying to address both of those issues. The World’s Technology Correspondent Clark Boyd reports from Brussels.

CLARK BOYD:  United Pepper makes a range of computer “peripherals,” things like webcams and USB hubs. But these aren’t boring, utilitarian products housed in black plastic. In fact, one of United Pepper’s signature products is a webcam called “Lili.” She kind of looks like a colorful one-eyed alien with tentacles.

XAVIER PETRE:  For sure, the design is completely new, it’s like an octopus, and you’ll say wow, this is a webcam, yes, it’s a webcam.

BOYD: Xavier Petre is a Managing Director at United Pepper. He tells me the webcam was built to minimize the amount of plastic and chemicals used. And he says the soft outer part is made from the recycled fibers of Vietnam’s Kapok tree.

PETRE: We will use this to really build the shape of the webcam. We use inside sand, from the Mekong. The sand is also very interesting, and we use some textiles. So we can use bamboo textiles, we can use different rice textiles, different type of textiles.

BOYD: All of this is part of United Pepper’s bid to make a line of more environmentally friendly electronics. It’s not so hard to make the outer part of the cam with greener products, but building the guts isn’t so easy. Tom Dowdall is the coordinator of Greenpeace’s Greener Electronics campaign. His organization has been pushing companies on two common hazards in electronics. Dowdall says those are PVC vinyl plastics, which help cabling stay flexible. And flame retardants, which guard against overheating.

TOM DOWDALL: Those two chemicals are particularly of concern when old electronics are disposed of, especially when they’re disposed of in developing countries. And often the wires are burnt to extract the copper, and that creates a lot of toxic dioxins and other hazardous chemicals.

BOYD: United Pepper says it’s working to find PVC alternatives, like plastics made from organic materials. But United Pepper isn’t just trying to be greener, it’s trying to be fair. Alistair Leadbetter is with a British organization called Traidcraft Exchange, which United Pepper hired to evaluate its manufacturing partner in Asia.

ALISTAIR LEADBETTER: United Pepper came to us, trying to apply principles of fair trade to the development of their computer peripherals.

BOYD: But unlike products like coffee and cotton, there really are no globally agreed fair trade standards for electronics. So, Leadbetter says Traidcraft took general principles outlined by the World Fair Trade Organization. And then applied them to United Pepper’s manufacturing partner in Vietnam.

LEADBETTER:  The child labor that may or may not be present in there. The wages that people are paid, the prices that people are paid, and the way in which health and safety is applied in those organizations as well. We haven’t as yet taken that supply chain, and gone all the way back to the way in which the plastics were produced, or the oil for the plastics was sourced, or the way in which the metals within the chips were mined and then produced.

BOYD: That’s a tall order, given the global nature of the electronics supply chain. And that’s why, says United Pepper’s Xavier Petre, the company admits that there’s work to be done.

PETRE: It’s not always possible to find electronics, all the components in the place where you do the assembly. Okay, so you have to import, so you have to check if the people who produced this are also fair trade, so that’s why we always try to say, okay, we are ethics to a certain level and respect that, and try to improve that.

BOYD: Petre says he believes, though, that a new generation of gadget-buyers will pay 10 to 15 percent more for greener, more fair trade products. United Pepper will soon be putting that to the test. The company is right now working on a touch-screen tablet computer. It will run on low-power flash memory, and have an outer plastic case made from rice husks. For The World, this is Clark Boyd, in Brussels.

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