by Sean Workman

It’s very common in our time of increasing hazardous waste and low volume recycling to hear of companies “going green”. Apple Computer for example has a led a massive internal effort to remove toxic chemicals from their products and many companies such as HP and Xerox have long been behind consumer product recycling programs.

Researchers Robert Thorn and Sol Roth from research and analysis firm GreenCert Inc. recently released a report detailing a rather unexpected find. While performing routine research on the practices of the world largest consumer electronics companies (often the worst pollution offenders, globally) they uncovered a surprising piece of information about the manufacturing facility that made Sony’s highly touted Cell processor. During analysis of resources used to create this revolutionary chip, GreenCert noticed two unfamiliar items listed as required, those items were simply listed as SSEA3 and SSEA4. Being a unique component to the Cell processor that GreenCert hadn’t seen used before, they initiated a side investigation to determine what, if any, special handling or disposal is needed since they weren’t listed on their hazardous materials data sheets. Upon further investigation, it was revealed that SSEA is actually Stage Specific Embryonic Antigen. The Cell processor actually uses human embryonic stem cells as one of the key ingredients during the manufacturing process. Quite literally, the Cell is partly made from (and this is only a slight stretch of the definition), people. Sony has so far refused to comment on these findings.

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