Televisions

The Bigger Picture - Ethical issues behind your TV screen

The average Briton spends almost ten years of their life watching TV, and over 95% of households own a television set.

TVs have become more energy efficient with time, so watching them now burns through less electricity. But like all electronics, they require significant resources to manufacture and have a serious impact on the communities involved.

Table highlights

Toxic chemicals

Many of the elements and compounds used in electronic devices are known to be toxic both to human health and the natural environment.

These include polyvinyl chloride (PVC) and brominated flame retardants, used in plastic parts, and phthalates, which are often used as a softener for PVC. These can release harmful by-products, including some carcinogens, particularly during disposal when burning releases chemicals directly into the air.

Ethical Consumer rates electronics companies on their commitments to phasing out these chemicals. No company in this guide received our best rating for toxic chemicals:

Worst: Cello, LG, Hisense, Dixons Carphone (Logik), Hitachi, Sharp, Panasonic, Toshiba, Sainsbury (Bush)

Middle: Philips, Sony, Samsung

Tax avoidance

The companies in this guide also did not do well in terms of likely use of tax avoidance strategies. In fact, all but one received our worst rating. Cello received a best.

Energy costs

When making purchasing decisions, we often focus on the amount of energy a product uses once bought. This is especially true for goods like TVs that have energy labels showing the efficiency and annual energy consumption through use.

But the most recent research we could find (from 2010) suggests that manufacturing a TV emits 300 kg CO2e.

By comparison, watching an average 40” TV emits around 52kg CO2e each year in the UK with our current electricity grid mix. That means it would take almost six years for use to equal manufacturing.

Production may have improved since 2010, but it is still likely that manufacturing is a substantial proportion of the lifetime carbon emissions of a TV.

This is without even mentioning the other environmental impacts of production: the huge amount of natural resources that are used, including 30 different minerals and lots of petrochemical-based plastics, the reliance on toxic chemicals, and the many issues with disposal…

Energy efficiency

Televisions are responsible for 4% of total electricity use in the home, and electricity use is itself only a fraction of home energy consumption overall, much more of which is heating. Still, energy

efficiency is always worth considering if you are going to buy a TV (whether second-hand or new).

Televisions are becoming more energy-efficient, helped in part by the introduction of the EU energy labelling scheme for televisions in 2010. TVs are rated A+++ to D.

With energy labels, it is tempting to read the headline energy efficiency class, the A or A+ rating, and then look no further. But the rating does not always correlate to how much energy your TV will actually use.

The overall energy use is affected by the size and features of the TV as well as its energy efficiency. As you might expect, the larger the screen the more energy required to power it.

Usefully, the EU energy label also shows the in-use power consumption in watts and the annual power consumption in kWh based on 4 hours’ usage per day.

It is this that is the important figure. The label also tells consumers whether the TV has a power button, enabling you to switch off the TV completely rather than leave it in ‘standby’ mode, which continues to use a small amount of energy.

If you want to make a choice based on energy consumption, the independent energy efficiency website www.sust-it.net lists over 300 televisions in terms of their in-use and standby running costs per day and per year, and users can sort by screen size and type. The Energy Saving Trust’s comparison site, www.toptenuk.org, shows the best performers for energy efficiency within different size brackets only.

The resolution race

As TVs become more energy-efficient, manufacturers are also racing to make them higher-res – undoing some of the good work when it comes to in-use energy consumption.

In recent years, manufacturers have moved from HD to Ultra-HD models. As a general rule, the higher resolution the TV (the more pixels used), the greater the energy consumption. 4K TVs – which have images 4000 pixels wide – consumed an average of 33% more energy than their HD predecessors at the point at which they were launched.

This year, manufacturers started offering 8K models – meaning they have again doubled the number of pixels on offer and again hiked the energy required.

Which screen?

There are several different screen types.

LEDs are the most energy-efficient screen, using roughly 20-30% less energy on average than an LCD of the same size. Plasmas are by far the least efficient, using almost twice as much power as an LCD and almost 3 times as much as an LED of the same size. For example:

Is it ever worth replacing your TV for a more energy-efficient model?

Even just from a carbon perspective, the answer is no. Televisions have become more energy-efficient over time.

But you’d have to wait 135 years if you replaced an average efficiency 40” TV from 2016 with an average efficiency 40” TV from 2019 before the energy-saving in use was more than the manufacturing carbon cost. (300 kg CO2e), based on the current carbon footprint of UK electricity (0.28307 kg CO2e per kWh).

E-waste and disposal

Each year, discarded TVs add to the huge amount of e-waste we generate: 50 million tonnes annually. The complexity of electronic equipment makes disposal complicated. Yet, only 20% of this mountain is reported as properly collected and recycled.

If not recycled properly, TVs join other electronic equipment often shipped to the global south, particularly Africa and Asia.

There, they will be sold on or sorted in informal recycling sites, where they are smashed and casings burnt, releasing toxic chemicals, before precious parts are sorted by hand. Workers on these sites face serious health issues as a result.

Some local authorities collect small electrical items as part of their kerbside collection. Otherwise you can recycle at some retailers and at Household Waste Recycling Centres. Recycle Now can be used to find your local recycling spots accepting TVs.

Living TV-less

Despite more and more of us also watching on our laptops, smartphones and other devices, TV ownership is again on the rise. Considering the costs of a new television, living TV-less is an option well worth considering.

In recent years, linking a laptop, tablet, smartphone or desktop PC to a monitor or projector and using a streaming service such as BBC iPlayer or Netflix has become a popular option. If this means forgoing yet another device, then it is a good way to reduce ecological impact. (If it means every family member owning several alternative devices, however, this obviously will not be the case.)

Human rights

The electronics industry is notorious for its poor treatment of the communities and workers in its supply chains, from the minerals funding armed conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) to the sweatshops relying on exploitative student labour.

Television manufacturers have faced much less scrutiny over their practices than some other electronics like computers and mobile phones. However, they are linked to many of the same exploitative conditions.

The conflicts in your TV

Almost 30 different minerals are used in a TV. The extraction of these damages the land. Industrial mining permanently scars the Earth’s surface, leaving behind toxic wastewater and soil. Mining areas are rarely rehabilitated.

Five minerals in particular have been linked to serious human rights violations: cobalt (see our ethical shopping guide to batteries), and what are known as the four conflict minerals: tin, tantalum, tungsten and gold (known as 3TG).

For years, paramilitary groups have fought for control of small-scale artisan mines in the DRC, where extraction of ‘3TG’ minerals takes place. Forced and child labour are common, and the money raised funds further violence, exploitation and corruption.

Workers in the DRC have, however, urged companies not to simply leave the region, as many depend on mining for their income. Instead, companies should work to ensure that the minerals aren’t coming from mines controlled by armed groups.

We rate all electronics manufacturers on their conflict mineral policies, and they scored as follows:

Best: LG, Philips, Sony

Middle: Hitachi, Toshiba

Worst: Cello, Dixons Carphone (Logik), Hisense, Sharp, Panasonic, Samsung, Sainsbury’s (Bush) Cello, Hisense, Dixons Carphone (Logik) and Sainsbury’s (Bush) didn’t appear to have a conflict mineral policy at all.)