Research Triangle Park (NC) - Lenovo announced today that eight of its Thinkvision monitors have been awarded the "gold" level of "green technology" by the Green Electronics Council.

The monitors received the highest level of environmental awareness in the council’s Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool (EPEAT), along with one other "gold" Lenovo monitor and they are the only monitors to date with this designation.

"Lenovo is leading the way in the current wave of environmental display improvements with the introduction of a full lineup of EPEAT Gold monitors," said Lenovo’s VP in charge of visual displays Tom Shell.

To achieve EPEAT Gold status, the product must adhere to all required criteria set forth by the GEC as well as at leadt 75% of optional criteria. Of the 289 monitors currently recognized by EPEAT as being environmentally friendly, 273 of them have silver status, which means they meet between 50% and 75% of the optional criteria. The other seven are at the bronze level, which just means all required criteria have been met.

There are 23 items on the "required" list and 28 "optional" ones, and include things like battery life, mercury and lead levels, and product longevity. The L151, L171, L171P, L194 Wide, L190X, L220X Wide, L174 and L197 Wide monitors from Lenovo were all recently approved for the gold level. The company’s L193P monitor achieved the status last October, giving Lenovo credit for all nine products on the list.

In 2007, Lenovo was on the top of Greenpeace’s annual list of environmentally-conscious tech firms, receiving a score of around 8/10. Nokia, Sony Ericsson and Dell were the only other ones who scored above 7.

New monitors on the list will start being shipped on April 18 with the last one hitting store shelves May 9.