On Saturday, January 7, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) honored the Sustainable Materials Management (SMM) Electronics Challenge winners (and participants) at the 2017 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.
The awards, which are presented annually, recognize leaders in the consumer electronics field who have made significant contributions in electronics recycling. Participants were honored for different facets of recycling: consumer education on recycling electronics, creating products that can be more easily repaired or reused, and creating new designs that eliminate the toxic materials from the product.
Winners of the Gold (Best Buy, Dell, LG, Samsung, Sprint, Staples) and Bronze Tier awards (Sony, VIZIO) together diverted more than 256,000 tons of electronics from landfills in 2015. That has the same environmental impact as taking 129,000 passenger vehicles off the road for 1 year!
A new award this year, The Cutting Edge Award, was created for “bold ideas that have the potential to make a huge impact on the future of sustainable electronics management across a product’s full supply chain”. This year’s winner, Samsung, was honored for its Cadmium-free Quantum Dot ultra-high-definition televisions.
For more information about this year’s awards see the full article: https://www.epa.gov/newsreleases/epa-recognizes-electronics-manufacturers-retailers-and-brand-owners-making-electronics