Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool (EPEAT)

The Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool (EPEAT) is a voluntary online procurement and environmental rating tool for electronic computing equipment that is designed to help consumers evaluate a product's attributes as they relate to the environment.

EPEAT, which was created by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Green Electronics Council (GEC), provides registered environmental product data and helps manufacturers promote environmentally sustainable products. EPEAT is based on a set of 23 performance criteria.

EPEAT was developed to meet a growing institutional demand for information on systems' environmental performance, cost and performance.

According to the EPEAT Development Project, selling six months' worth of EPEAT-registered green computers would produce the following energy/environmental savings:

• 13.7 billion kilowatt hours (kWh) of electricity - enough to power 1.2 million U.S. homes for one year
• 24.4 million metric tons of materials - the equivalent of 189 million refrigerators
• 56.5 million metric tons of air pollution, including 1.07 million metric tons of global warming gases - the equivalent of removing 852,000 cars from the roads for one year
• 118,000 metric tons of water pollution
• 1,070 metric tons of toxic materials - the equivalent of 534,000 bricks and enough mercury to fill 157,000 household thermometers
• 41,100 metric tons of hazardous waste disposal - the equivalent of 20.5 million bricks