The Benefit of Disconnected Charger

EU and Nokia Remind to Conserve Energy

by Yaroslav Lyssenko

[ 09/25/2006 | 11:54 PM ]

Cnet News.com  reports that a mobile industry task force led by Nokia announced on Thursday that it has agreed to do its part for the environment by reminding you to conserve electricity.

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“The members of the task force, a project of the European Commission (EC), agreed to include alerts on the cell phones they make that will remind people to unplug their charger once a phone is fully charged. If 10 percent of the world’s cell phone owners did this, the group’s final report said, it would reduce energy consumption by an amount equivalent to that used by 60 000 European homes per year,” says Cnet News.com.

Nokia announced that it will have the alerts in place on its phones by the middle of 2007. The initiative is part of a pilot project by the environmental agency of the EC intended to encourage industries to “reduce the environmental impact of their products throughout their lifecycle.” Groups from various industries looked at everything from raw materials to manufacturing processes to the effects of product decomposition.

“We are quite happy with this first approach, though obviously we would like to go deeper. We will issue a report on what has born fruit from this and we will look at, in a year from now, the results. This is an ongoing process and hopefully other companies will come on board,” said Barbara Helfferich, a spokeswoman on the environment for the Commission.

Companies that participated in the EC mobile task force, whose research spanned two years, include AMD, Epson, France Telecom/Orange, Intel, Motorola, Panasonic, Teliasonera, and Vodafone.

The EC listed passenger cars, meat products and housing as having the largest impacts on the environment overall.

• Cnet News.com: Your Cell Phone is Charged. Please Unplug.