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HP's greatest impact on the environment is through our products and services. The design stage provides the opportunity to minimize those impacts. Our policy is to design products and services that are environmentally sound and safe throughout their life cycle (see Environmental, Health and Safety Policy on page 34 of our FY05 report).
We established our Design for Environment (DfE) program in 1992. Our DfE priorities are product energy efficiency, materials innovation and Design for Recyclability to reduce the quantity and environmental impact of the materials in our products. The DfE program also addresses packaging.
HP's Environmental Strategies Council coordinates the implementation of our DfE strategy. This group includes representatives from each global business unit and sales region, as well as from supply chain, operations and other corporate functions. Our global network of product stewards works with design and development teams to incorporate environmental innovations into our products.
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Customer requirements |
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Customer demand increasingly influences environmental product design. As a result, DfE innovation provides competitive advantage. Customers increasingly care about environmental factors such as product energy use and recyclability (see Customers and global citizenship). Governments in many countries often set demanding public procurement criteria.
Eco-labels help customers identify products that meet certain environmental criteria. We conform to and certify products to many eco-labels around the world (see detail about compliant products). This is essential to sell products in some markets and it provides a competitive advantage in others.
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Industry standards |
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Harmonizing product standards encourages innovation by avoiding local regulatory barriers. Even when regulations introduce new objectives, industry members may collaborate to determine how to best achieve them. Harmonizing environmentally related product standards can also help manufacturers maintain consistent levels of quality products and services.
In addition, harmonized product standards can facilitate making informed environmentally responsible purchasing decisions. For example, HP was instrumental in the multi-stakeholder process that developed the environmental performance standard IEEE 1680, published by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers in 2006. This standard integrates a wide variety of existing regulations and standards, including U.S. Energy Star® and the European Union Restriction of Hazardous Substances (RoHS) and Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) Directives.
The IEEE standard, which was adopted as the basis for the EPEAT tool for computers, specifies 23 required and 28 optional criteria across eight areas of environmental impact covering all product life cycle stages. It defines three levels of compliance and provides an evaluation tool for buyers to assess the environmental performance of desktop and notebook computers and displays.
HP is also active in various bodies that develop standards for the electronics industry such as the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) and Ecma International. For example, HP has supported the IT Eco Declaration since its launch in 1996. We have issued more than 1,000 product IT Eco Declarations, participated in the Ecma working group that made this an international standard in 2006, and led the project to broaden the standard to include print supplies. See more information about Design for Environment.
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New company acquisitions |
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Part of HP's business strategy is to grow through acquisition. When we acquire a company, we first ensure that current products meet applicable regulatory requirements and then we start their transition to HP's more demanding DfE standards. This transition may take several product introduction cycles to complete. Until then, we do not include these products in our product goals or progress reports. In 2006, HP acquired Voodoo PC, a manufacturer of high performance and personalized gaming computer systems, and in 2005, we acquired Scitex Vision, a manufacturer of large format printers. We are currently working with both these companies to transition their products to HP's environmental product design requirements.
