The O2 'Eco Rating' scheme ranks mobile handsets according to a range of factors that measure their sustainability - from the materials used in the phone to how its functions help the user lead a more sustainable lifestyle.
While O2 hopes that the scheme will help establish an industry-wide standard measure of a phone's sustainability - and say that the proposal has had a 'warm' response from other networks and many manufacturers - two major manufacturers are not currently participating in the scheme: RIM and Apple.
While O2 say that BlackBerry makers RIM are 'supportive' and have pledged to join the scheme next year, Apple has refused to let the iPhone be part of the ratings - preferring instead to highlight their own descriptions of their environmental policies.
The manufacturers taking part in the scheme are HTC, LG, Nokia, Palm, Samsung and Sony Ericsson, which O2 says covers 93% of the handsets sold by O2.
The scheme awards phones a ranking on a scale up to five (including decimal points), also represented by a rainbow icon. Currently, the best-ranked phone is the Sony Ericsson Elm, which achieves an Eco rating of 4.3 out of 5, while the worst is the destructively-named LG Etna, which scores just 2.7.
Developed in conjunction with sustainability experts Forum for the Future, the rating is based on seven differently weighted factors - the corporate responsibility of the manufacturing company; the manufacturing processes used in the phone's creation; the materials used in the phone; the packaging and distribution cost of the phone; the environmental cost of using the phone; and the environmental cost of disposing of the phone.
More nebulously, it also incorporates the sustainability impact of the phone's functionality - in other words, marking up phones if, for example, they can feature apps that help the user live a more eco-friendly life, if they can replace the need to buy other seperate devices such as stanavs, or if they allow people to cut dwn on travel with video conferencing capabilities.
'The last thing we wanted was to say was "smartphones are bad, and the cheapest phones are good",' commented Forum For The Future's James Taplin.
The rating also doesn't take into account the potential lifespan of the phone. Taplin said that at the moment, this was too difficult to accurately judge, and that more robust metrics would be needed before it could be added to the measurement - although it may be incorporated in the future.
The Eco Ratings are available both online and in O2 shops from today.Via : metro.co.uk
