There has been much attention and interest recently towards the electronic industry's practices regarding chemical selection and use. Several stakeholders have recently released information regarding the industries activities:

• Greenpeace recently released a PDF of their report “Guide to Greener Electronics,” which compared practices at fourteen companies. This report is a topic I mentioned in a previous blog post. While we're pleased with our results thus far, we recognize that we have much more to do in this area.

• Earlier this week, Greenpeace released another report (see a PDF of this report here) comparing the chemical content of five notebook manufacturers—Dell, Acer, Apple, Hewlett Packard, and Sony.

• Clean Production Action also recently released a report (see PDF here) comparing the chemical practices of five companies, including Dell.

All these reports have generated an increasing interest in Dell’s chemical use policy. A PDF of our policy can be found here. It outlines our commitment to eliminate substances of concern from our products.

Dell's vision is to avoid the use of substances in our products that could seriously harm the environment or pose a health risk and to ensure that we act responsibly and with caution. Because of this, we have committed to eliminate in our new products all remaining uses of brominated flame retardants (BFRs) and polyvinyl chloride (PVC) by 2009, as acceptable alternatives are identified that will not compromise product performance and will lower product health and environmental impacts.