Sustainable Product Design | Eco Products, Recycled Materials

Find out a product’s eco story before you buy it. Is it made from recycled materials or components which are easy to recycle at the end of the product’s life? This kind of ‘eco thinking’ is built in from the earliest stages of our product design.

Energy saving features Products with energy saving features can help you stop wasting unnecessary energy and can help reduce household utility bills too. Many of our TVs for example have a light sensor which automatically adjusts picture brightness to suit light levels. You can enjoy optimum viewing and save energy too.

Recyclable parts

Choosing a product made from recyclable parts means that there’s less environmental impact when it comes to the end of its life. Parts can be re-used again for other purposes. We begin by designing our products so that they use fewer materials and are easily separable for recycling.

Sony is also one of the four founders of the European Recycling Platform (ERP), the first Pan-European take back scheme.

Eco-conscious components Does a product contain components which could impact the environment when there are alternatives available? We try to minimise the use of materials and parts which are potentially harmful to the environment. For example, all current VAIO personal computers contain no Brominated Flame Retardants (BFRs) in their casing and main printed wiring boards.

Raw materials Using recycled materials to create products means less use of natural resources and less impact on the planet. For example, nearly 85% of all plastic parts in the 2010 models of the VAIO S Series are made with recycled materials including polycarbonates recovered from CD or DVD manufacturing.

Sustainable processes Check a product has been made using sustainable processes – from sourcing materials to manufacture and waste removal. Among hundreds of other initiatives, we try to use renewable energy in our sites, have strict criteria for choosing suppliers and we work towards zero waste at all times.