Apparently the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) in the United States has been considering for some time whether or not to add projectors to the list of products for which their Energy Star certification is available. Probably by now most everyone has seen the Energy Star logo on some display or other, and knows that products such as computer monitors, printers, TV sets, etc. have built-in logic that puts them to sleep when not in active use, thus substantially reducing their energy consumption.

We are not sure if the number of projectors in use, and the number of hours they are powered on but not being used, result in as much damage to the environment as some other phenomena that are not under Energy Star, but we generally laud their activities on behalf of the environment. Projector manufacturers who are already strapped by the over-competitiveness of the business may not welcome the extra costs of complying, but at least they can benefit from the publicity of their announcements.

A few months ago, Pacific Media Associates published results from our sixth biennial large-scale (1000 responses) and statistically representative survey of United States users and intenders of front projectors, both individual consumers and organizations. The survey focused on many topics of timely interest, including “greenness”. Of the individual consumer respondents, nearly 60% said an environmentally-friendly projector is an absolute must or very important for their next projector. Among organizational users, this figure was nearly 70%. The “greenness” factor is, and will continue to be, a hot topic in the electronics industry.