Simply put televisions are tough on the environment. They’re built with heavy metals & toxic chemicals and they even burn energy when they’re turned off. Based on the Environmental Protection Agency’s estimates, they can produce an average of 1,200 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions per household per year. Also, with new technologies like 3D HDTV, more and more new and larger screen sets are being sold everyday.

The good news is that technological advances are allowing manufacturers to produce TVs that are far more eco-friendly. The bad news is that finding the truly eco-friendly TVs can be very confusing. Statistics on power consumption are available if you look for but they aren’t typically easy to find because many TV’s advertised as “eco-friendly“, are really not.

The Energy Star sticker is theoretically a good starting point in the search for a green TV. But as of March 16, more than 1,100 HDTVs are Energy Star 3.0 compliant so that designation is hardly meaningful. Thankfully the newest Energy Star standard, version 4.0, takes effect on May 1 and is much more discerning. For example, a 42-inch HDTV must be 45% more efficient to be compliant under the new 4.0 standards.

Generally speaking the most environmentally friendly TVs are LED-backlit LCD sets. They are far more energy efficient than plasma or conventional LCD sets, which both use fluorescent backlights. According to the Energy Star Web site fluorescent lamps release about 80% of their energy as heat, so a lot of power is just wasted. A well-built LED set is not only much more efficient but also should be mostly cool to the touch.

LEDs are free of mercury, the toxic metal used in all fluorescent lights. So when it’s time to trash or preferably, recycle your LED TV, hopefully many, many years down the line, it will create less toxic waste than a conventional LCD or plasma.

Finally If the low operating cost and eco-friendliness haven’t convinced you to buy LED, the gorgeous form factor of the TVs themselves should. The newest of the LED TV’s will literally be pencil-thin, and the picture quality is always more vibrant than a conventional LCD. I agree that no other display type today can touch the pure picture quality of a plasma, but it’s common for a plasma TV to consume four times as much energy as an LED in a year, and that can be as much as a small refrigerator.

Ask Ron About New 3D HDTV’s

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