Samsung Goes Green for 2013

South Korea's Samsung Electronics announced a green management initiative which hopes to make it a leading eco-friendly company by the year 2013. In doing so, it pinpointed four core objectives as part of its "Eco-Management 2013" plan, which includes:

• Reducing emissions of greenhouse gas from manufacturing facilities by 50 percent while cutting indirect emissions from all products by 84 million tons.
• Ensuring all of its products are both eco-friendly and exceed global eco-mark standards.
• Investing approximately $4.3 billion in eco-management initiatives.
• Furthering green partnerships with suppliers and partners.

According to this GreenBiz.com article, that $4.3 billion will be split between improving energy efficiency of its products ($2.5 billion) and cutting greenhouse gas emissions in half ($1.8 billion). Many of its products will have standby power consumption cut in half (from one watt to half a watt) and the company will attempt to identify new recyclable and organic materials for use in items such as laptops and cell phones.

This goes along nicely with a recent announcement from the South Korean government, which plans to invest around 2 percent of its annual gross domestic product in "green growth" industries over the next five years as part of its economic stimulus package.

Photo courtesy of markus941, via Flickr.