Greenpeace warns deluge of E-waste with Vista

The international environmentalist group Greenpeace Saturday warned of a potential deluge of electronic waste or "E-waste" as companies and individual users replace their computers to achieve compatibility with Microsoft's new Vista operating system.

"With Vista, Microsoft could effectively hasten the obsolescence of half the world's PCs, especially in the absence of fully-functioning global take back systems for PCs," Greenpeace Southeast Asia Toxics Campaigner Beau Baconguis said in a statement.

"Companies will feel the need to upgrade more computers sooner -and when they do, the world is unfortunately not prepared for the massive E-waste the upgrades will generate," Baconguis said.

Greenpeace cited a study conducted by U.S. technology marketer SoftChoice Corporation of inventory data representing 112,000 PCs from more than 472 organizations, which showed that "50 percent of the PCs are below Windows Vista's basic system requirements" and "94 percent are not ready for Windows Vista Premium edition."

"We maintain that the useful lives of existing electronic and computer equipment should be prolonged as much as possible," Baconguis said.

"In the end, this is about social responsibility. The idea that software innovation would result in more mountains of computer scrap ending up in the dumps of Asia and Africa, contaminating the environment, and affecting the health of communities, is both offensive and intolerable," she added.