A new report, “Impacts and Insights” looks at the progress made in 2016 on supplier chain working conditions, conflict minerals initiatives and inclusion of safer chemicals brought about due to products being TCO Certified. The current generation of TCO Certified, launched in November 2015, placed greater overall responsibility for product and factory compliance on the owners of the brand rather than the manufacturers, if different.
A case study was carried out featuring 16 brand owners and showed that there were improved working conditions in factories manufacturing certified products compared with 2013. The Improvements were seen to be in areas such as discrimination and freedom of association.
The current generation of TCO Certified has also brought about a change in use of hazardous chemicals in IT products and TCO Certified will now only accepts safer flame retardants that have been independently benchmarked.
TCO Certified is an independent sustainability certification for IT products run by TCO Development.
