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HP Global Citizenship Report
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Product innovation
Materials
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Our choices of materials in designing products represent opportunities to improve HP’s environmental performance. We are focused on:
These actions benefit HP, our customers and our employees. Using less material saves energy during manufacturing and distribution while reducing costs, including the disposal cost of products at the end of their lives. Avoiding substances of concern can remove risks to workers manufacturing our products and to recyclers who manage the proper disposal of products at end of life. We are dedicated to being compliant with measures such as the European Union’s REACH (Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation and Restriction of Chemical substances) regulation.
At minimum, our products comply with regulations regarding materials use, but customers increasingly want to know more about substances in products, even those that aren’t restricted by regulation. We’re responding by moving from emphasizing the substances excluded from our products to being able to report specific materials that are included. We’re developing a materials tracking system that will allow us to provide customers with materials declarations for new HP products (see Goals).
We take a proactive approach to evaluating materials and eliminating those that pose an environmental, health or safety risk. We may replace or eliminate substances because of customer or legal requirements or because we believe it is appropriate based on a precautionary approach. We strive to replace even legally permitted materials when scientific data has established a potential health or environmental risk and when less risky, commercially viable alternatives are available. Virtually all HP-branded products fully meet the requirements of the European Union Restriction of Hazardous Substances (RoHS) directive, which restricts the use of lead, mercury, cadmium, hexavalent chromium, PBB and PBDE flame retardants. HP was one of the first companies to set and achieve a voluntary goal to comply with EU RoHS materials restrictions worldwide. We promote harmonization of material restrictions across different countries because we believe this enables faster adoption to achieve the desired environmental benefits. HP is also taking steps to comply with the European Union REACH regulation of December 2006, which places greater responsibility on industry to communicate and manage chemical-related risks. The regulation introduces a plan for assessing the safety of new chemicals while providing data for about 100,000 existing chemicals. REACH also offers a mechanism for identifying substances of very high concern and for eventual substitution of these substances as suitable alternatives are identified. We expect that the vast majority of these substances of concern (sometimes referred to as “candidate list” substances) are not typically used in electronic products. But HP supports the overall REACH objective of improving the protection of human health and the environment and believes it will help customers be more informed about the substances found in products. HP will meet all REACH requirements and is committed to providing our customers with required information about the chemicals in our products. We are working with industry and government to achieve a workable system that fulfills the goals of REACH and with our suppliers to ensure that HP products comply. We continued to make progress in 2007 in removing substances of concern. For example, we introduced the HP Compaq 2710p Notebook PC and the HP Compaq 2510p Notebook PC, which use light-emitting diodes (LEDs) instead of mercury lamps as a light source. The use of LEDs lowers energy consumption, extends battery life and avoids the use of mercury. Brominated flame retardants (BFRs) and PVC have proved difficult to substitute entirely because of the lack of suitable alternatives for some uses. Over the last ten years, HP has proactively eliminated most uses of these materials from our products, with limited exceptions. For example, we still use certain BFRs in printed-circuit boards because suitable alternatives are not yet available. Our goal is to eliminate all remaining uses of BFRs and PVC from new computing products as technologically feasible alternatives become readily available. To be accepted, alternatives also must not compromise product performance or quality or adversely impact health or the environment. We expect to achieve this goal for new computing products launched in 2009. An important component of HP’s materials substitution efforts is determining that replacement substances have a lower environmental and health impact than the substances identified for possible phaseout. Many potential replacement materials are still being evaluated for environmental and health impacts. Unfortunately, standard methods to perform these evaluations do not exist, and as a result differing conclusions are sometimes drawn from the same study. To address this concern, HP engages with government agencies, such as the United States Environmental Protection Agency (U.S. EPA), and nongovernmental organizations, such as Clean Production Action, to develop standard methods for evaluating the environmental and health impacts of new substances. The timeline shows when specific substances were restricted by HP and identifies substances that HP is considering for restriction.
1 Dates refer to when the materials restrictions were adopted by HP. In some cases, regulations allow exemptions for certain applications for some materials. Materials in gray text beyond 2007 have been identified by stakeholders as potential materials of concern. Future possible restriction of those materials depends, in part, on the qualification of acceptable alternative materials.
We’ve developed control processes for product design and manufacturing to ensure that our products use compliant materials and meet HP's specifications. We communicate materials restrictions to our design teams and to our manufacturing suppliers through our General Specification for the Environment (GSE), which prohibits or restricts the use of certain substances in HP products, the third-party products that HP may sell as part of an integrated solution, and in manufacturing processes. The GSE is integrated into our product development process and into supplier contracts as part of our standard contractual terms and conditions. We use "active verification" to manage the restriction of materials in our products. This includes risk-based data sampling and chemical analysis as required. Supplier corrective action processes are used as needed to resolve any issues that arise.
HP strives to use less material in products through improvements in product design and technological advances. An example of dematerialization is the shift from PCs to notebooks and from cathode ray tube (CRT) monitors to flat panel displays. A typical flat panel display uses slightly more than half the amount of material in a conventional CRT screen and requires approximately 60 percent less energy to use. The weight difference between PCs and notebooks is even more dramatic—typically an 80 percent reduction. Combined, a notebook with an additional flat screen display weighs just one-third as much as a PC with a CRT. This shift also saves roughly a third of the packaging and decreases energy consumption in transport to customers. Other examples include:
HP invests in the research and development of safer manufacturing materials to help reduce environmental impact throughout the technology industry. We explore the use of alternative materials such as bioplastics made from vegetable sources. For example, an HP project in 2001 led to the creation of 100 prototype printer cases made from corn-based bioplastics. While research determined that corn is not a sufficiently durable material for this use, ongoing industry research in alternative materials, including recycled plastics, is critical to finding more efficient materials with lower environmental impacts. We believe nanotechnology holds promise for electronics in the long term and have researched this area since 1995. In 2000, HP received a patent for its molecular crossbar memory technology that is now the de facto standard for nanoelectronics research worldwide. Nanomaterials are controversial because some believe nanoscale particles or wires could cause health or environmental problems. We do not currently use these nanomaterials in our products and recognize that health and safety issues must be integral to any research program that seeks to bring such materials to market. Our Quantum Science Research group at HP Labs in Palo Alto, California, has been a leader in both research and public policy discussions related to this issue. Additionally, HP is involved in standards committees to define appropriate working procedures for nanomaterials. We work with the electronics industry and our suppliers to identify new materials for potential use. For example, HP chairs an industry consortium project that is evaluating lead-free alloys and participates in another focused on lead-free solutions for high-reliability products, as we work to eliminate one of our last significant uses of lead, for solder in servers. We are also jointly funding the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s study on flame retardants in printed-circuit boards.
We also made great progress in incorporating recycling materials into our products by engineering print cartridges that use recycled plastic without compromising quality or reliability. More than 200 million cartridges have been manufactured using the process through 2007. HP used more than 5 million pounds (2,300 tonnes) of recycled plastic in its original HP inkjet cartridges in 2007, and the company has committed to using twice as much in 2008. On average, HP notebook products are up to 90 percent recyclable/recoverable by weight2, and our printing and imaging products are typically up to 70 to 85 percent recyclable/recoverable. In 2007, we introduced a speaker module made from 100 percent post-consumer recycled plastics in all HP Compaq 6500 and 6700 series Notebook PCs. We strive to use recycled plastics in our products, but their potential is limited for several reasons:
Although not a material selection issue per se, we feel it is important to address the subject of printer emissions. In 2007, a report published out of an Australian University raised concerns about ultrafine particle emissions from laser office printers. HP remains confident in the safety of our products. Based on our comprehensive research and development efforts, quality testing procedures and current scientific expertise, no health risk specific to HP toners or emissions from HP laser printing systems is to be expected when used as intended. HP laser printing systems—printer, original HP print cartridges and paper—are tested for particle emissions according to international standard procedures under high-use operating conditions in controlled environmental test chambers. The devices' contribution to commonly present indoor air particle concentrations lies well below recognized U.S. and German occupational exposure limits. Since the physical properties and chemical composition of ultrafine particles from laser printing systems are as yet unknown, HP is actively engaged in research and cooperates with one of the world's leading independent authorities on this subject, the Wilhelm-Klauditz Institute (WKI) in Germany. It is one of HP's goals to define state-of-the-science methods to further characterize such emissions—to make sure we maintain the high level of user safety typical for HP laser printing systems. See news release.
2 Per the definition used in the European Union WEEE regulations.
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Innovative materials 