Greenpeace have named Sony's Vaio notebook and a Sony Ericsson mobile phone and PDA as the most environmentally friendly products on the market in a survey released this week.

"Searching for Greener Electronics", a study similar to a survey that Greenpeace releases on a quarterly basis, was released during this week's CeBIT conference (the world's biggest technology fair), detailing a study of 37 products which had been voluntarily submitted by 14 electronics manufacturers. The submissions were based on four sets of criteria: energy efficiency, use of hazardous materials, product life cycle and innovation. The products were then awarded points on a 1-10 scale.

While Sony can congratulate themselves on their products' success, it is necessary to point out here that their winning entries were notable only because they were the only products to score just over half of the points available.

Despite this, Greenpeace remain cautiously optimistic. The company's international toxics campaigner Yannick Vicaire said of the findings: "We have already witnessed the arrival of greener products in the market, such as Apple's new laptop, the MacBook Air, and Nokia's new phone, the Evolve. Manufacturers still have a long way to go, but more and more are now taking the environmental impacts of their products seriously," he added.

The CeBIT conference is the world's biggest technology fair, running this year until March 9, with around 5,500 exhibitors taking part. Reflecting the current public interest into'greener' and more environmentally friendly products, many of these exhibitors such as IBM and Microsoft are taking the opportunity to show their commitment to the green cause. Greenpeace have been present at the fair for this very reason, determined to sort the "greenwash" from the genuine.

This particular list was published with the hope of encouraging manufacturers to develop environmentally friendly products by demonstrating how it is already being done. A particular concern that Greenpeace highlights is that of the 20 to 50 million tonnes of electronic waste that is being produced each year. Zeina Al-Hajj, a spokeswoman for Greenpeace, explains that "we are building an Eiffel Tower of waste every 70 hours". This is a worrying image enough, which is worsened by the fact that 75% of this waste simply disappears; "Is it in landfill, or being shipped to China, or sitting in attics? We really have no idea." Hajj says.

Greenpeace hopes that they can encourage manufacturers to reduce the amount of waste from products and make what waste is produced less toxic. This, they say, can be achieved by creating products using environmentally friendly components which would use less energy and could also be recycled.

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