Fujitsu: Corporate Social Responsibility
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MI Summary
Fujitsu: Corporate Social Responsibility
At last, one of the few Fujitsu environmental papers that was probably written in English from the outset. Refers to Fujitsu Services, so probably UK-focussed. Not an exciting read, but covers most of the necessary bases.
Text of Article
We believe that we have a duty, in all the communities in which we operate, to contribute to the sustainable growth of society as well as to grow ourselves. We pursue sound management and transparency of reporting to gain the trust not only of our customers, but of society at large. We maintain strict ethical and legal standards, we seek to protect the global environment and we respect and protect human rights
Fujitsu Services
Fujitsu Services is the European-centred IT services arm of the Fujitsu Group and its stated policy is to conform to all of the relevant corporate social responsibility policies of the Group. These include corporate governance, social and community and environmental policies.
Fujitsu and the Environment
We are committed to operating a sustainable and socially responsible business and the environment is a strong component of our sustainability and corporate responsibility activities. The corporate environmental policy and its processes are embedded in our business management system and we have a strong environmental compliance programme. We take seriously our responsibilities to comply with environmental legislation in both the letter and the spirit of the law. For example, we assume our customers’ environmental duty of care as well as our own and we have worked for several years to ensure that our take-back and recycling operation will meet all the requirements of the WEEE regulations.
We operate a stringent programme of environmental auditing and we have programmes in place to limit our major environmental impacts; energy usage, waste to landfill and emissions to air. We actively support recycling by involving ourselves in the research and development of new recycling methods for difficult-to-recycle materials like plastics, both in products and in packaging.
We take a leadership role in the electronics and the environment arena – the head of our corporate environmental affairs department is the chairman of ICER (the UK Industry Council for Electronic Equipment Recycling) and chairs Intellect’s environmental policy committee – and we are involved in various environmental technology research activities. We train our staff in environmental legislation, environmental awareness and our compliance methodologies. This includes workshops on future legislation and its likely impact and the environmental risks involved. We have developed a network of green teams throughout the business. Site based, the green team is the basic building block of implementing our environmental policy and programmes. The teams brings together people at all levels in the organisation to put forward their ideas and commitment to the greening of the company.
Green teams work with the corporate environmental affairs department and together we have mounted awareness campaigns on saving water, switching off equipment and lights and recycling. We also promote national events through the green teams – “Bike to Work Week”; “In Town Without Your Car Day”. We run environmental awareness days and bring in local organisations involved in the environment. We belong to several green business clubs, work with other companies to enable small and medium enterprises to become more environmentally aware and also to offer help with practical matters like recycling. We run a car share scheme for our employees using the latest car share software from the Transport Research Laboratory and we develop green travel plans and carry out travel surveys with our staff in an effort to reduce CO2 emissions in the daily commute. Teleconferencing and video conferencing is also encouraged as a way of reducing the total road and air miles travelled by our staff. We work with local authorities in helping to plan public transport requirements, especially when we are opening a new site. We measure road and air miles travelled in order to calculate our total CO2 load.
We have operated an environmental take-back and recycling service for end-of-life IT equipment for the last thirty years – long before it was a legal requirement. We have a network of recycling partners all of whom have been extensively environmentally audited to ensure they reach our standards – they are then awarded Fujitsu Services Approved Recycler or Refurbisher status.
This system was the basis of the well regarded ICER Accreditation Scheme, and the head of our corporate environmental affairs department is a member of the ICER Accreditation Board. We offer our customers a range of recycling and asset management services including recycling for spares recovery, refurbishment for staff sales and charitable donations, re-use by our customers elsewhere in the business, sale into the second-user market, purchasing and sale of second user equipment into corporate markets, and disassembly and recycling to high environmental standards. We offer a range of data wiping services compliant with a number of high-level defence and government standards.
We have measurable targets against which we monitor our environmental performance. We will continue to work to minimise the effects on the environment of our operations, and the products and services we provide, through a process of continual improvement in the design, manufacturing and end of- product-life processes. We will also adhere to the highest level of environmental standards and legislation and conduct our operations so as to minimise as far as is appropriate the adverse effect of those operations on the environment
Design authorities ensure that appropriate attention has been given to the environmental implications of their service or solution design before delivering a tender or entering into any contract, while our procurement function ensures that all products acquired comply with applicable environmental legislation. We measure and report on utilities usage; reduction targets are in place, and we ensure that all internal infrastructure, in particular at the commissioning of new sites and decommissioning of old, complies with environmental guidelines and legislation.
We work with our suppliers to ensure that they give consideration to the impact of their processes and products on the environment. To ensure compliance with the RoHS (Restriction of certain Hazardous Substances) Regulations, we are engaged in an extensive X-ray fluorescence (XRF) testing and audit process with all of our suppliers to ensure that all the products we place on the European market are RoHS compliant. We also work closely with our customers to identify ways in which, together, we can improve awareness of, and reduce impact on, the environment and to ensure that, where we can, we meet our customers’ own environmental objectives.
