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David Daoud
Research Manager and Analyst
IDC
HP has made significant strides in design for recycling. Its engineering and design teams have taken into account the concerns of refurbishers and recyclers by creating products that can easily be repaired, refurbished, disassembled or recycled. Such enhancement in product design has been augmented by the company’s assistance to recyclers, making available to them guidelines that greatly simplify the recycling process.
Among the latest of the company’s techniques in the area of design for recycling is the concept of modular design, which combined with the use of the proper “environmentally-friendly” materials help HP to increasingly establish itself as a leading “green” IT supplier. HP further pushed to reduce its products’ environmental impact by incorporating more easily recyclable plastics, reducing the number of different plastic types in a single product and replacing coating and paint with molded-in colors. Furthermore, reuse, as a way to extend the life of a system, has been facilitated by HP’s modular design approach, enabling simple component swapping during the refurbishing process.
With the environment in the minds of HP product engineers and designers, the company boasts today EPEAT’s number one rated desktop in the market in terms of environmental standards. The company’s HP rp5700 Business Desktop PC has gathered EPEAT’s highest Gold rating of 20 points, a desktop that is ahead of the competition in “green” IT compliance. In the notebook space, HP also boasts one of the “greenest” portable PCs, the Compaq 2710p notebook, also rated Gold at 21 points.
The steps forward made by HP in the areas of environmental stewardship are significant. However, the company needs to expand its “green” product initiative from a select number of commercial systems to a broader commercial and consumer lineup of products.
In terms of environmental services, HP’s voluntary programs are broad in scope and well structured to address the needs of both consumers and commercial PC users. Incentives are well determined and intelligently designed to incorporate choices such as HP Asset Recovery programs, which can provide value for qualified used commercial equipment, or HP trade-in programs for consumer and commercial customers, which provides credit toward the purchase of HP products for qualified used equipment. HP also provides environmentally responsible recycling if the product can no longer be used. Although these offerings are broad based, geographically spread and with efficient incentives, a more massive educational campaign must be implemented by HP to make its customers and consumers in general more aware of its offerings. This means that HP has to work with its partners in the channels, in particular retailers and resellers, to make its offerings more visible to users wherever they shop for their PCs and general IT and electronics needs. Short of a comprehensive and proactive campaign, consumers could be ill-informed about the potential to recycle their hardware.
Regardless, HP has been one of the few IT companies that managed to establish a comprehensive “green” strategy and an ambitious roadmap to further reduce its own environmental footprint and that of its clients through innovative products, new technologies and comprehensive business processes. Its environmental strategy is cohesive, transparent and sustainable, making it among the very top, if not the number one most efficient IT vendor in environmental stewardship.
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