One Laptop per Child Creates the World's "Greenest" Laptop Computer

The green-colored XO laptop, which will begin manufacturing and distribution in volume later this year, consumes the least power, minimizes toxic materials, is extraordinarily rugged, has a long lifetime, works with renewable power sources, and is itself recyclable. As a result, the XO laptop has earned the highest environmental certifications: it is in full compliance with the European Union's rigorous RoHS(a) standards; it has qualified for Energy Star 4.0 Category A (the most stringent ranking); and it has received the US PC and notebook environmental ratings agency EPEAT Gold(b) rating, one of only eight laptop computers to do so.

"In developing the XO laptop, OLPC had the goal of creating a child-friendly educational tool that inspires creativity and learning for children all over the world," said Mary Lou Jepsen, chief technology officer at OLPC. "But equally important for us was to produce a laptop that could be used in remote areas with unreliable or limited energy sources. The result is a laptop computer that has more than 10 times less environmental impact than the average laptop computer. It's the greenest laptop ever made, and that's not just its color."

The XO laptop requires just one-tenth of the electrical power necessary to run a typical laptop and has been designed to be able to run without an electrical input so that children around the world can use human-generated and solar energy to power the laptop. In addition, the toxins found in most laptops - including mercury, cadmium, lead, and hexavalent chromium - have been dramatically reduce or eliminated in the XO laptop.

According to Energy Star, an average idle desktop computer uses 70 watts of power and an average idling laptop computer consumes 20 watts of power. When idle, the XO laptop uses a single watt of electricity. If everyone in the world replaced their desktop or laptop with an XO laptop, roughly 85 billion kilowatt hours would be saved for a total of $9 billion. That translates into 50 million barrels of oil and 65 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions. Put another way, if all laptops and desktops switched to the OLPC architecture, the savings in power spending alone would be enough to buy 50 million laptops outright for the world's poorest children.

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