Sustainable Laptop

It’s not very easy to find the best eco-friendly laptop alternatives, because for the mobile computer industry this is still not a very big selling point or topic they advertise with, but for you it should be if you want to switch to a more sustainable lifestyle. We provide a list of the best environmental friendly laptops below.


While it’s important to buy a green laptop made with eco-friendly materials, that is easy to recycle and ethically produced, it’s also important to make sure that you can easily upgrade the laptop (add RAM or a bigger hard disk) or have a user removable battery, so you can replace or upgrade components and therefore extend the lifetime of your laptop. Every extra year you can use your machine reduces the ecological footprint and helps keeping the environment clean by reducing consumption and saving you money, because you have a better lifetime value and don’t need to buy a new laptop every 3 years.


What to look for in a eco-friendly laptop alternative?

• Eco-friendly raw materials used (no toxic chemicals, ethical sourced)
• Good repairability and user upgradeable (user replaceable battery, hard drive, RAM, keyboard,…)
• Easy to recycle (with materials like aluminium)
• A good lifetime value (user upgradeable, spill proof keyboard, dust resistant, sturdy construction with aluminum or magnesium case instead of plastic)
• A good EPEAT Rating (like EPEAT Gold)
• Sustainable production (using renewable energy, reducing production waste and water consumed)

What is the average life span of a laptop?

Based on different sources the average life span of a laptop is between 4-5 years.

You can extend the life span by buying a laptop that lets you replace and upgrade components like RAM, hard drive, or keyboard to extend it’s life time. It also helps to use a less resource hungry operating system like Linux instead of Windows for an older laptop, that will improve speed and loading times so you can use it for emails, office tasks or browsing the web for many years.

What is the EPEAT Rating?

EPEAT Rating is a eco label for the Computer and IT sector that operates globally. The program provides a verification of manufacturers claims that is independent and rates products based on their sustainability (reduction of toxic materials, recyclability, use of recycled plastic, etc.). They also provide an online registry for EPEAT rated eco-friendly products: https://epeat.sourcemap.com/


Why is a Gold EPEAT Rating important for an environmental friendly laptop? 

EPEAT assesses different lifecycle environmental aspects of a product and ranks them as Gold, Silver or Bronze based on a set of environmental performance criteria defined. Gold is the best rating. More info: https://greenelectronicscouncil.org/epeat/epeat-overview/

What are the most sustainable laptop brands?

• Apple
• Lenovo
• HP
• Acer
• Asus


Check our list below for the best sustainable laptops from these brands.