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Welcome

This is the eighth consecutive year HP has reported its global citizenship performance, reflecting our ongoing commitment to transparency. Our Global Citizenship Report 2008 describes the company's policies, programs and performance as we strive to balance our business goals with our impacts on society and the planet.

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View the interactive dashboard to track our recent performance, see progress against our 2008 goals and view our targets moving forward.

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We developed a version of our report with customers in mind. It features HP solutions and best practices to help enterprises and other organizations address pressing global citizenship issues.

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Global Citizenship at HP

Our five pillars
Our five pillars

Our five pillars

We focus our global citizenship initiatives on five areas: ethics and compliance, human rights and labor practices, environmental sustainability, privacy, and social investment. Collectively, these areas span our entire business, influencing our priorities, operations, product development and brand differentiation.

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Making the business case

Making the business case

Customers are giving global citizenship greater weight in their IT purchasing decisions, making it increasingly important to our business. Global citizenship is also key to responding to new opportunities, increasing the efficiency our operations, strengthening our relationships with stakeholders, and attracting and retaining exceptional employees.

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Ethics & Compliance

Ethics and compliance
Upholding Standards of Business Conduct

Upholding Standards of Business Conduct

Regardless of tenure, title or responsibilities, everyone at HP is expected to be an ethical leader. Last year, we trained 97% of employees in our Standards of Business Conduct (SBC) and introduced a simpler, values-based version of the SBC in more than 20 languages.

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A central hub for compliance

A central hub for compliance

In 2008, we strengthened leadership of our Compliance Office to promote greater consistency across our global organization. The office works with other groups within HP to provide a holistic view of governance, risk and compliance to senior management.

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Human Rights & Labor Practices

Raising supply chain standards

Raising supply chain standards

HP is leading a new approach to strengthening social and environmental standards in the global IT supply chain. We collaborate with local NGOs to train suppliers in building capabilities and making systemic improvements to protect workers and the environment.

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Fostering employee success
Fostering employee success

Fostering employee success

Our HP culture rewards performance, provides opportunities for training and advancement, and encourages open, honest communications and respect for all. We remain focused on increasing the diversity of our workforce.

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Supply chain audit performance

Supply chain audit performance

We have made it easy to review in-depth results of our supplier audits—either globally or by region—with an interactive tool that presents data, explains major causes of nonconformance and highlights challenges and HP’s response.

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Engaging society
Engaging society

Engaging society

HP unconditionally supports human rights and promotes higher standards in our employment practices and throughout our supply chain. We collaborate with others to share our progress in these areas and raise awareness of human rights issues.

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Environmental Sustainability

Sustainable design

Sustainable design

In 2008, we introduced the HP Eco Highlights label, which helps customers understand the environmental attributes of more than 115 products. Through our Design for Environment program, we focus on energy efficiency, materials innovation and design for recyclability.

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Climate and energy
Climate and energy

Climate and energy

HP was the first IT company to report the greenhouse gas emissions of key suppliers, and we are on track to reduce the energy consumption and associated greenhouse gas emissions of our operations and products to 25% below 2005 levels by 2010.

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Showcasing impact

Showcasing impact

Visit our gallery of sustainable design example—new to this year’s report—highlighting HP solutions that increase productivity and lower costs while improving environmental sustainability.

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Reuse and recycling
Reuse and recycling

Reuse and recycling

In 2008, we recovered for reuse 75 million pounds (34,000 tonnes) of hardware units and recycled 265 million pounds (120,000 tonnes) of electronic products and supplies, increases of 16% and 6% compared with 2007.

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Privacy

Privacy
HP’s accountability model

HP’s accountability model

Our groundbreaking approach to protecting privacy goes beyond legal and industry norms. We review all decisions related to privacy not only for compliance but also for our values, customer expectations and a range of potential business risks, and hold ourselves accountable for our actions.

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Collaborating on solutions

Collaborating on solutions

HP works with regulators and nongovernmental organizations such as the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperative and the European Commission to advance thinking and develop new frameworks for protecting the electronic flow of information across borders.

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Social Investment

Innovations in education
Innovations in education

Innovations in education

We believe technology can be a catalyst in addressing inequalities in education and fostering the next generation of skilled workers and entrepreneurs. In 2008, HP invested nearly $20 million in programs that apply technology in creative ways to transform the learning experience, particularly in science, technology and engineering, and math.

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Entrepreneurship education
Entrepreneurship education

Entrepreneurship education

HP supports organizations and programs that help cultivate socially minded entrepreneurs, particularly in developing regions. Our goal is to increase the number of entrepreneurs using technology to launch and grow small businesses, crucial to creating jobs and spurring economic growth in local communities.

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Introduction
Global citizenship at HP
Ethics & compliance
Human rights & labor practices
Environmental sustainability
Privacy
Social investment
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HP Global Citizenship Report  > Environmental sustainability

Climate and energy

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Our planet’s climate is changing, and scientific consensus is that greenhouse gas (GHG)1 emissions are the main culprit. The effects are forecasted to be far-reaching and substantial. The IPCC Fourth Assessment Report, published in 2007, warned that unmitigated climate change would likely trigger a range of environmental problems threatening agriculture, natural habitats and communities in low-lying coastal areas.

The economic toll will be high as well. The cost of responding and adapting to unmitigated climate change could reach between 5 and 20 percent of annual global gross domestic product (GDP), according to the Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change. Released in 2006, the report also estimates that mitigating climate change instead would cost approximately one percent of global GDP each year. To stave off these potential issues, negotiations under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change are aiming for an agreement in 2009 to reduce global emissions by at least 50 percent (compared with 1990 levels) by 2050.2

Climate change presents significant environmental, economic and social risks—and opportunities—for HP, our customers and society. The IT industry is responsible for about 2 percent of global GHG emissions3, and we are working within our own business and with others to reduce energy use and GHGs. But we believe tackling climate change also presents significant opportunities for HP because our products and services offer great potential to help reduce energy use throughout the global economy. Using IT to reduce GHG emissions in other sectors can avoid billions of tonnes of CO2e each year.

We believe effectively responding to climate change requires a broad coalition spanning governments, industries, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and individuals worldwide. To that end, HP is collaborating with governments, NGOs and other technology companies to promote strong climate change policies, advance industry standards for energy efficiency and reduce GHG emissions throughout the economy. For example, in 2008, we strengthened our partnership with the conservation organization WWF to improve our performance in environmental stewardship, sustainability and energy efficiency while enabling WWF to achieve broader, bolder and more measurable conservation impacts.

HP also joined more than 140 leading global companies in signing a communiqué from the Corporate Leaders Group on Climate Change at the Poznan negotiations in December 2008. The communiqué called for a treaty to be agreed in Copenhagen in December 2009 to be based on targets for emission reductions by 2050. (See our global issue brief about climate change and energy efficiency.)

Strategy

Our climate strategy involves the following four elements, each of which increases in scope and complexity, while also in impact:

  • Cutting GHG emissions from our internal operations
  • Reducing GHG emissions in our supply chain
  • Reducing our customers’ energy and paper consumption when using our products and services
  • Using IT to enable a low-carbon economy
HP operations
 

Cutting GHG emissions from our internal operations:

  • Decrease GHG emissions from HP facilities
  • Reduce GHG emissions from employee business travel
  • Address other employee-related GHG emissions (such as commuting)
 

Reducing GHG emissions in our supply chain:

  • Work with suppliers to reduce GHG emissions from product manufacturing
  • Encourage suppliers to reduce energy and GHG emissions in their supply chains
  • Reduce the GHG emissions from transporting our products.
 

Reduce the impact of our products and the equipment used to provide services on the climate:

  • Decrease the energy consumption of our products
  • Educate customers on product carbon footprint
  • Improve energy efficiency in our customer data centers and reduce the impact of our outsourcing services.
 

Develop products and services for the low-carbon economy:

  • Apply IT to reducing the energy intensity and carbon footprint of activities
  • Substitute low-carbon alternatives for carbon-intensive processes
  • Use IT to monitor and manage energy use and GHG emissions
  • Offer products and services to reduce customers’ GHG emissions from travel, manufacturing, supply chain and publishing.
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Low carbon economy Supply chain
Customer use

Highlights in 2008

HP operations4

In 2008, we reduced our GHG emissions by 4 percent compared with 2007, in absolute terms, and 13 percent normalized to revenue. We achieved this mainly by continuing to reduce office space even though our business grew, because employees increasingly work from home or in flexible workspaces.

Our San Diego facility began to generate solar energy, using more than 6,200 solar panels that will produce over 10 percent of the facility’s energy needs and save more than 550 tonnes of CO2e emissions a year.

Supply chain

In 2008, we began working with suppliers to gather data on energy use and GHG emissions. We were the first electronic company to announce the emissions of our key suppliers.

We are reducing product transport emissions by optimizing distribution networks and converting shipments where appropriate from air to ocean and from road to rail. We included environmental performance as one of the seven core elements in a new logistics strategy and worked with our top global logistics providers to calculate the estimated emissions for the freight they are moving on our behalf.  

Customer use

HP introduced many products and services in 2008 to help customers save energy in their use of IT, from PCs and printers to data centers. They include the following:

  • The HP Compaq dc7800 Ultra Slim Desktop—one of the industry’s smallest enterprise-ready desktops, received the most stringent Gold rating of the Electronic Products Environmental Assessment Tool (EPEAT®). (See case study.)
  • The HP Deskjet D2545, which uses 40 percent less energy than its predecessor, is made from 83 percent recycled plastic material and uses HP 60 ink cartridges, made from 50-75 percent recycled plastic including resins from returned HP cartridges. (See case study.)
  • The redesigned HP ProLiant BL460c G5 server reduces energy use by up to 25 percent over HP’s previous model and is already compliant with upcoming ENERGY STAR® server guidelines (See case study.)

Low-carbon economy

Our greatest potential contribution to reducing GHG emissions is applying our technology to improve the energy efficiency of activities beyond the IT sector. In 2008, we published a white paper identifying these three potential areas of innovation:

  • Reducing energy intensity and the carbon footprint of existing products and services
  • Substituting low-carbon alternatives for carbon-intensive activities
  • Enabling management of energy use and GHG emissions

HP also contributed to Smart 2020, a report by The Climate Group on behalf of the Global e-Sustainability Initiative (GeSI), which concluded that transformation in the way people and businesses use technology could reduce annual man-made global emissions by 15 percent by 2020, saving more than $800 billion in energy costs.

Greenhouse gas emissions related to HP’s business, 2008
Category
(click on item for more detail)
2008 emissions [tonnes CO2e] Level of influence5 Our influence
HP operations 1,442,000 High We manage our facilities and data centers to reduce energy consumption.
HP employee business travel 425,000 High Our travel policies and telepresence solutions reduce business travel.
Product manufacturing 3,500,0006 Medium We work with our first-tier suppliers to report and reduce their energy use, but we do not have direct control.
Product transport 1,800,000 Medium We optimize distribution networks and convert to lower-energy transport modes where appropriate, but we do not control shipping operations.
Product use Roughly an order of magnitude more than HP operations Medium We design products and offer services to use less energy, but customers determine the use of our products.
Product recycling (CO2e avoided)7 300,000 Medium We offer reuse and recycling services, but customers determine the treatment of their products at end of life.
1 Throughout this report, "greenhouse gas" or "GHG" refers to all greenhouse gases emitted by human activities, and "CO2e" refers to "carbon dioxide equivalent," the unit used to measure greenhouse gases. CO2 is the main, but not the only, man-made greenhouse gas.
2 Breaking the Climate Deadlock: A Global Deal for Our Low-Carbon Future, a report submitted to the G8 Summit, June 2008.
3 Conceptualizing ‘Green’ IT and Data Center Power and Cooling Issues, Gartner, September 2007.
4 HP operations data do not reflect sites gained through acquisition of EDS. Data from these locations will be reflected in the HP Global Citizenship Report 2009
5 Refers to the level of influence HP has on this category of emissions.
6 2007 is the most recent year for which this data is available.
7 According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's WARM Tool.

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