Tech Greenwashing Brings Hip Wader Season

(MoneyWatch)  Given the dual interests in global warming and economics, it's easy to understand why many tech companies would focus on double-green marketing messages. Lower power consumption and you give customers the double benefit of being kinder to the environment and to their wallets. Unfortunately, in their quests for self-promotion, some businesses are straining credulity and common sense.

Examples abound. Klipsch Group, a consumer electronics company that makes speakers and headphones, is emphasizing environment-friendly manufacturing practices. Nothing wrong with that. But things get a bit screwy when Klipsch claims that having everyone in the country switch to its speakers would save energy:

While average home loudspeakers require 1 watt of audio power in order to produce 85 to 88dB sound levels, Klipsch speakers can produce 3 to 6dB more sound output using that same 1 watt. A 3 to 15dB range is more typical if you include the company's founding product, the Klipschorn®. If you consider only a 6dB difference, that reduces amplifier power needs by a factor of four, cutting amplifier electricity utilization by 75 percent and ultimately helping save the environment.

For example, 35 percent of the homes in the U.S. have home theater or stereo equipment. If all of these homes used Klipsch products, our nation could save 764,400 megawatt hours per year--many nuclear power plants are in the 7,000,000 megawatt hours range per year. Also, if everyone used Klipsch speakers, the U.S. would save the equivalent of burning 1.12 million barrels of oil per year in a fossil fuel power plant.

In other words, the suggestion is that by switching to Klipsch, people can get a bit more sound with the same amount of power. But consider that, according to the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, 70dB is the noise from heavy traffic or a vacuum cleaner, 80dB is the level of sound you'd get from an alarm clock or busy street, and 90dB would be a lawnmower or subway. Would the additional library whisper of 15dB really add much? And, according to Klipsch's own argument, the power driving all that sound is 1 watt, which isn't a whole lot to begin with.

The Klipsch pitch goes on to assume that 35 percent of homes with a home theater or stereo equipment use external speakers, all apparently blasting away and melting the polar ice caps. But many people use radios or stereos with built-in speakers, so their products wouldn't be applicable. And just how many hours a day are these devices supposed to be blasting? The problem this type of marketing faces is when consumers start to wonder if a better way to reducing power consumption would be to turn the sound down to reasonable levels, rather than consider all the energy and materials required to build speakers for every household in the country.

Or there are the press releases from such companies as Useful Corporation, maker of desktop virtualization software allowing multiple people to use one PC, that already claim globe-saving achievements:

In 2008 Userful's PC-sharing software saved over 40,000 tons of CO2 emissions, and is on track to save over 200,000 tons of CO2 in 2009, the equivalent of taking more than 35,000 cars off the road, or planting 50,000 acres of trees!

How does the company calculate that estimate? By assuming numbers such as the following:

• over a year, a PC consumes 526kWh
• producing a PC requires 1818kWh
• electric use generates 1.55 lbs of CO2 per kWh

If you check the EPA Energy Star ratings, idle rates of PCs typically run at about 40 to 65 watts. Divide 526,000 watt hours by even 65 and you get 8,092 hours, or 337 days. In other words, a PC would have to be idling, never going into sleep mode, and left on virtually 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, with barely a day off a month for good behavior. Again, the off switch does wonders.

Although real strides in lowering electric bills can be a powerful benefit to offer customers, greenwashing a tech marketing campaign runs the risk of turning the corporate face red from embarrassment.

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