HP and the Environment
From Lauraibm
Contents |
Summary
Coverage in the Press
What the Vendor says about itself
Environmental, Health and Safety Policy
Hewlett-Packard is committed to conducting its business in a manner that delivers leading Environmental, Health and Safety performance. This is consistent with our commitment to corporate citizenship, social responsibility and sustainability.
Our goals are to provide products and services that are safe and environmentally sound throughout their lifecycles, conduct our operations in an environmentally responsible manner, and create health and safety practices and work environments that enable HP employees to work injury-free.
To accomplish this, we will:
- Meet or exceed all applicable legal requirements
- Aggressively pursue pollution prevention, energy conservation and waste reduction in our operations
- Design and manufacture our products to be safe to use and to minimize their environmental impact
- Offer our customers environmentally responsible end-of-life management services for HP products
- Require our suppliers to conduct their operations in a socially and environmentally responsible manner
We achieve this high level of performance by integrating these objectives into our business planning, decision-making, performance tracking and review processes to ensure we achieve our goals and continually improve upon them.
Each employee has an individual responsibility to understand and support our environmental, health and safety policies and to actively participate in programs to ensure our goals are achieved.
We believe our company must work with employees, suppliers, partners, customers, and governmental, nongovernmental and community organizations to protect and enhance health, safety and the environment. We foster open dialogue with our stakeholders to share relevant information, and contribute to the development of sound public policy and business initiatives.
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Product Return and Recycling
HP offers our customers several choices to manage aging or unwanted computers while also minimizing the impact on the environment.
Trade in Return for cash HP Trade-In offers users the opportunity to capture the fair market value of aging technology and upgrade to new HP technology.
Return for Cash HP Financial Services will pay your company for qualified computer equipment you no longer want or need.
Recycle HP makes it easy to recycle unwanted computer hardware and printing supplies responsibly.
Donate HP makes it easy to donate your used computer equipment. In the US, this program is made possible through a partnership with the National Cristina Foundation (NCF).
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Product Design
HP's greatest environmental impact is through customer use of our products and services. Our goal is to improve customers' lives and work by providing simple, valuable and trusted experiences with technology. We integrate environmental considerations into our business strategy because this results in better products.
Customers increasingly value environmental aspects of products, such as energy efficiency and provisions for reuse and recycling, two of HP's global citizenship priorities (discussed in detail in those sections). We differentiate our products by integrating such features to deliver lower total cost of ownership and improved user experience.
Since 1992, we have focused on specific environmental issues – through our Design for Environment program. For example, HP introduces new materials to meet customer expectations, to capitalize on emerging technologies and to substitute for materials of concern.
In packaging, we minimize materials, utilize recycled and recyclable materials when possible, and reduce packaging size and weight to improve transportation fuel efficiency.
As a global company with customers worldwide, product transport also offers opportunities to improve our environmental impact. Through logistics initiatives such as more efficient transport planning and alternative pallets, we reduce the energy needed to move each product.
We also work to ensure that as many people as possible can use our products and information, by integrating accessibility into product and website design.
Design for the Environment
As one of the world’s largest consumer IT companies, a leading IT supplier to small and medium-size businesses and a leader in enterprise computing, HP’s largest impact on the environment is through its products.
The environmental performance of products is largely determined at the design stage. Through intelligent design we can reduce the environmental impact of our products, and that of our customers.
To accomplish this objective, HP established its Design for Environment (DfE) program in 1992.
Design-for-Environment (DfE) is an engineering perspective in which the environmentally related characteristics of a product, process or facility are optimized. Together, HP's product stewards and product designers identify, prioritize and recommend environmental improvements through a company-wide DfE program. HP's DfE guidelines derive from evolving customer expectations and regulatory requirements, but they are also influenced by the personal commitment of its employees.
The Design for Environment program has three priorities:
- Energy efficiency – reduce the energy needed to manufacture and use our products
- Materials innovation – reduce the amount of materials used in our products and develop materials that have less environmental impact and more value at end-of-life
- Design for recyclability – design equipment that is easier to upgrade and/or recycle
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Material Use
Materials innovation at HP means reducing the environmental impact of materials we select or already use for our products. This innovation often aligns with our objective of reducing materials and recycling costs. HP considers three aspects of materials innovation:
Materials Substitution and Elimination HP supports a precautionary approach, by which we mean that we strive to replace a material when scientific data has established a potential health or environmental risk, even if its use is legally permitted. Before substituting a material for these reasons, we identify an alternative that has a lower environmental impact and meets quality and cost requirements. For example, in 2006 we replaced solvent-based paints on some of our workstations and digital televisions. The water-based paints we are using avoid organic vapor emissions during the coating process and make the plastics using these paints easier to recycle.
We work with the electronics industry and our suppliers to introduce new materials when alternatives do not yet exist. For example, we continue to investigate alternatives to PVC-coated wires and cables as well as replacements for TBBPA on printed-wiring boards.
Ideally, we design products to remove the need for materials of concern, rather than replacing a substance with lower environmental impact.
Reduction of Materials Quantity HP strives to use less material in products through improved product design and technological advances. For example, HP All-in-One products that combine printers, scanners, copiers and fax machines in a single unit can reduce materials use by up to 40%, compared to separate standalone devices.
As the balance of products HP sells has shifted from PCs to notebooks and from cathode ray tube (CRT) monitors to flat panel displays, material use per unit has decreased. A typical flat panel display uses little more than half the weight of materials in a conventional CRT screen and requires approximately 60% less energy in use. The weight difference between PCs and notebooks is even more dramatic – typically an 80% reduction. Combined, a notebook with an additional flat screen display represents only one-third of the weight of a PC with a CRT. This smaller size saves roughly a third of the packaging weight and decreases energy consumption in transport to customers.
Innovative and Recycled Materials HP works with suppliers to identify materials that will reduce the environmental impact of HP's products and that of our customers.
We evaluate the total life cycle, environmental impact and cost of any new material, and we strive to identify substitute materials that have lower total environmental and health impacts than the materials they replace. It can be difficult to confirm claims for new materials because they may not have been researched as thoroughly as existing materials. For example, we cannot yet be confident about materials to replace PVC from wires and cables. Thermoplastic rubber/elastomer (TPR/TPE) and polyethylene-derived hybrids are emerging, but these materials are not sufficiently developed for wide-scale use. Long-term environmental impact assessments and safety approval for these materials have yet to be finalized.
HP has an extensive recycling network which is a potential source of recycled plastics for use in new products. While HP would like to take advantage of this fact, the potential is limited for several reasons. The greatest difficulty is that most recycled plastics contain substances that we have eliminated from our current products. Also, mixed plastics do not have the mechanical properties necessary for use in new IT products, and it is difficult to separate dissimilar plastics during recycling to produce a homogenous material. Finally, logistical constraints limit our ability to move large volumes of material from the regions where recycling is conducted to the regions where most new products are made. Recycling is an area in which we continue to look for improvements.
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End of Life
Electronic waste, or E-waste, is a growing environmental concern. By designing products that can be easily upgraded to extend their useful lives and designing more recyclable products, HP reduces e-waste and its environmental impacts.
Extending the life of products Most of HP's products have a modular design that allows various components to be removed, upgraded or replaced which extends the useful life of the product. Servers, processors, memory, network connectivity, power supplies, and mass storage devices are upgradeable.
Design for recycling HP products are designed to be recycled. Recycling design features include:
- Modular design to allow components to be removed, upgraded or replaced
- Eliminating glues and adhesives, for example, by using snap-in features
- Marking plastic parts weighing more than 25g according to ISO 11469 international standards, to speed up materials identification during recycling
- Reducing the number and types of materials used
- Using single plastic polymers
- Using molded-in colors and finishes instead of paint, coatings or plating
- Relying on modular designs for ease of disassembly of dissimilar recyclable materials
HP’s DfR standards include clear design guidelines and checklists that can be used to assess a product’s recyclability. This allows HP to develop more easily recyclable products.
Recycling services HP has long been a leader in e-waste recycling. HP's Planet Partners programs offers return and recycling programs for LaserJet printer supplies, Inkjet printer supplies and all manufacturer's computer hardware in many countries around the world.
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Logistics
HP is working to reduce each year the environmental impact of transporting our products around the world. Most of our computer and imaging products are assembled in Asia, while the majority of HP's sales are in Europe and the Americas. We typically transport these products by ship from Asia to regional distribution centers, for transport to their final destination by truck or by rail. We use air transport for lighter products, such as cameras, and when urgent deliveries are necessary. We typically produce servers in the region in which they are sold.
Our logistics network uses significant fossil fuel for ships, trucks and aircraft. The resulting vehicle emissions contribute to climate change and can increase local air pollution. We are unable to measure these emissions because we use third parties rather than our own transport fleet.
Our Design for Logistics program improves transport efficiency throughout HP and decreases energy use per pound of product transported. It ensures that we consider the broad logistics implications of new product packaging and transport, including issues such as pallets and truck loading (see Performance).
We also seek to reduce environmental impacts of our logistics network through a shift from air to ocean freight where practicable. Every tonne of freight transported by air for one kilometer results in 0.6 Kg of CO2 emissions, compared to just 0.003 Kg for ocean transport1.
In 2006, we reduced the environmental impacts of transporting our products by continued modal shift from air transport to sea transport and by improving transport planning and pallet use.
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Sources
- 5. Material Use
- 6. End of Life
- 7. Logistics
