Forget 2012 -- Apple, Others Should Deliver Universal Phone Chargers Now

That's the target date for the implementation of a global, industry-wide standard for a universal mobile phone charger, agreed upon by 17 major telecoms and mobile phone manufacturers at February's GSMA Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain. But even as the EU shaves two years off its own path to a standard that will both make consumers' lives easier and reduce thousands of tons of industrial waste a year, we're left wondering why the rest of the world can't do the same.

The EU managed to convince the 10 mobile phone companies that control 90 percent of the European market to standardize power supplies for their products, and to do it in barely any time at all. The manufacturers -- Apple, Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Motorola, LG, NEC, Qaulcomm, Research in Motion, Samsung and Texas Instruments -- will outfit their phones with micro-USB ports so that any charger based on the micro-USB connector can top them off. That means European consumers will be able to re-use old phone chargers when they purchase new phones, even those made by different manufacturers.

The benefits for both consumers and the environment are considerable, which is why the EU executive pushed hard for top phone makers to agree to the standard. Ultimately, though, phone chargers are just part of a problem that generates huge amounts of waste throughout the consumer electronics (CE) industry.

Paul Panepinto of universal power supply developer Green Plug estimates that "the average user [of CE products] throws away 300 power adapters in their lifetime." Some 3.2 billion new power supplies were manufactured worldwide in 2008, even as two billion older ones were dumped into landfills, according to the San Ramon, Calif.-based company.

It's difficult to see who benefits from this other than makers of power supplies for mobile phones and other CE devices -- the demand from gadget buyers for a messy collection of purpose-built power supplies would appear to be slight.

Just as puzzling is why the mature markets of North America and Asia shouldn't move to the new standardized charger regime within the same rough timeframe that Europe will. After all, if mobile phone makers are already going to be making universal chargers for the EU next year, how hard can it be for them to do the same thing elsewhere?

So how about it, Apple, et al.?