HP reports social and environmental performance and goals for fiscal year 2008

HP was the first IT company to release the greenhouse gas emissions associated with its products manufacturing by publishing the emissions attributed to its first tier suppliers, the Company said. The reporting is part of HP’s effort to offer greater transparency and encourage other companies to do more to promote supply chain responsibility.

HP qualified for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) SmartWay logo labeling program to reduce fuel consumption, greenhouse gas and other air emissions of surface transportation carriers. HP also was the first company of the EPA’s approximately 950 SmartWay Transport Partners to qualify to have the SmartWay logo placed on its product packaging. To earn this designation, HP certified its surface transportation carrier network for consumer accessories and desktop and monitor products was composed entirely of SmartWay-compliant carriers.

HP introduced the HP Deskjet D2545 Printer, the company’s first printer made almost entirely from recycled plastic material. Eighty-three percent of the printer’s total plastic weight is made from recycled plastics, and it uses HP 60 ink cartridges, which are molded from recycled plastic resins. Additionally, the overall packaging for this printer is 100 percent recyclable. The printer is ENERGY STAR qualified and features HP Smart Web Printing, which lets users easily combine portions of numerous web pages onto one page to save paper.

HP won Walmart’s environmental design challenge by replacing a PC’s conventional cardboard and plastic packaging with a reusable bag made from 100 percent recycled materials. The design reduced product packaging by 97 percent, conserved fuel and reduced CO2 emissions by removing the equivalent of one out of every four trucks previously needed to deliver the notebooks to Walmart stores and Sam’s Club locations around the country.

HP reduced the greenhouse gas emissions associated with its energy use by 4 percent compared to 2007 in absolute terms and 13 percent normalized to revenue. “HP’s commitment to global citizenship is based on the premise that keeping our business goals and values aligned drives innovation and growth,” said Gary Elliott, vice president, Global Citizenship, HP. “Our leadership in areas such as supply chain transparency and environmental sustainability demonstrates our commitment to hold ourselves to higher standards of integrity, contribution and accountability.”

HP reuse and recycling milestones, goals and programs

HP additionally announced it has recovered for reuse 3.5 million hardware units weighing 75 million pounds (34,000 metric tonnes(2)) and increased its recycling volume to 265 million pounds (120,000 metric tonnes) globally in 2008.

With a total of 1.71 billion pounds (775,510 metric tonnes) of electronic products and supplies recovered to date – almost the total weight of the Golden Gate Bridge(3) – HP is on track to meet its goal to recycle 2 billion pounds (900,000 metric tonnes) of products by the end of 2010 (since 1987) and to reuse 450 million pounds (200,000 metric tonnes) of products by the end of 2010 (since 2003). HP’s progress includes recycling 1,435 million pounds (650,000 metric tonnes) to date, and more than 275 million pounds (125,000 metric tonnes) have been reused.(4)

HP operates product reuse and recycling services in 53 countries or territories worldwide. In 2008, it expanded its audit program for reuse and recycling vendors and posted the results of 2008 on-site audits, disclosing the summary results of the assessments of 13 reuse and 30 recycling vendors in 22 countries. HP plans to conduct an additional 55 audits of its reuse and recycling vendors in 2009 to further promote transparency.

Additional highlights from HP’s reuse and recycling programs include:

In January, HP launched a U.S. buyback program for consumers. Through the HP Consumer Buyback and Planet Partners Recycling Program, consumers receive cash back for their unwanted PCs, monitors, printers, digital cameras, PDAs and smartphones of any brand. If there is no value, consumers can responsibly recycle their HP and Compaq-branded products free of charge.

In November 2008, HP expanded the HP Planet Partners print cartridge return and recycling program to include HP authorized retail recycling locations for HP ink cartridge and LaserJet toner cartridge collection, in addition to other recycling options.

HP announced an industry-first engineering breakthrough that uses recycled content – from cartridges returned through the HP Planet Partners return and recycling program as well as materials such as plastic water bottles – in the manufacture of new Original HP inkjet cartridges. Since 2005, HP has used more than 32 million pounds (14,500 metric tonnes) of recycled plastic resin(5) in more than 565 million inkjet print cartridges.(6) HP has pledged to triple the use of recycled material in its inkjet products by 2010.

In the United States, HP was one of the first companies awarded the Green Recycling and Asset Disposal for the Enterprise (GRADE) certification by the research organization IDC in 2008.