EPEAT(Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool)

EPEAT is a US standard, organised by the green electronics council. EPEAT is currently (at the time of writing) not legal for EU public sector procurement, there is case law against it. This is due to various mandatory EMS and environmental reporting requirements and some specifications that make it incompatible with EU regulations and drivers. EPEAT is a multi-tiered standard, which awards Bronze for a number of criteria (most of which are a legal requirement in the EU anyway), Silver and Gold are awarded for a number of optional criteria. However it should be noted that the optional criteria include key areas addressed by DEFRA as a minimum specification for green procurement (a mandatory minimum in UK central government), meaning that an EPEAT Gold product might not meet the minimum standard outlined by DEFRA. Some of the criteria aren’t quite inline with EU drivers, such as the elimination of carcinogenic fire retardants identified by the EU and DEFRA. www.epeat.net The last EPEAT specification for desktop PC’s was introduced in 2002/2003, making the standard quite old, a specification review is due and I’m working with the BCS DCSG to attempt to ‘EU-ise’ the standard to make it compatible with our way of doing things over here.