Greenpeacenow officially hates Samsung. The environmental organization has taken issue with Samsung’s inability to remove Brominated Flame Retardants, or BFRs, from its products. BFRs have been linked to environmental damage, and specific types have been banned from Europe altogether because of the potential for human harm.
Greenpeace singling out companies is nothing new. The last big example I can think of is when it defaced HP’s headquarters—effective at getting the word out, I suppose. That being said, Greenpeace’s new beef with Samsung is a little odd in that, back in 2004, Samsung was the first company to agree to Greenpeace’s new, BFR-free guidelines. Whether or not Greenpeace should be charged with developing this or that standard is something for a long law blog to tackle. Samsung was supposed to get its BFR-free act together by January 1, 2010, but clearly we’ve flown by that date.
Hence, Greenpeace officially in freak-out mode.
But don’t give up hope! Samsung says that it will, indeed, have BFR-free MP3 players and digital cameras by June, 2010, and BFR-free laptops by January 1, 2011.
We’ll see, said the blind man, we’ll see.