Materials

Materials innovation at HP means reducing the environmental impact of materials we select or already use for our products. This innovation often aligns with our objective of reducing materials and recycling costs. HP considers three aspects of materials innovation:

• Materials substitution and elimination
• Reduction of materials quantity
• Innovative and recycled materials

	Materials substitution and elimination

We may replace or eliminate substances of concern due to customer requirements (including criteria for eco-labels valued by our customers), legislative requirements or because we believe it is otherwise appropriate.

Customers at times encourage us to replace materials in our products. For example, some HP customers requested that we remove brominated flame retardants in the external case plastic parts of our products. We removed most of them more than ten years ago, and in 2006 we met our goal to remove remaining brominated flame retardants from external case plastic parts in all new HP product models introduced after December 31, 2006, with a single, short-term exception. Another example is PVC, which we eliminated from most product uses several years ago and which we removed from new packaging designs for HP product models in 2006.

Legislation regarding hazardous substance restrictions, such as the EU Restriction of Hazardous Substances (RoHS) Directive and Japan J-MOSS, has also required us to substitute materials. In 2006, we achieved compliance with these regulations (see Goals) for hundreds of thousands of hardware parts, substituting new materials in many of them, while developing numerous HP and industry standards to ensure these products meet our customer's expectations for performance, quality and reliability.

HP also supports a precautionary approach, by which we mean that we strive to replace a material when scientific data has established a potential health or environmental risk, even if its use is legally permitted. Before substituting a material for these reasons, we identify an alternative that has a lower environmental impact and meets quality and cost requirements. For example, in 2006 we replaced solvent-based paints on some of our workstations and digital televisions. The water-based paints we are using avoid organic vapor emissions during the coating process and make the plastics using these paints easier to recycle.

We work with the electronics industry and our suppliers to introduce new materials when alternatives do not yet exist. For example, we continue to investigate alternatives to PVC-coated wires and cables as well as replacements for TBBPA on printed-wiring boards.

Ideally, we design products to remove the need for materials of concern, rather than replacing a substance with lower environmental impact.

To achieve materials substitution or elimination in our products, HP and our suppliers must have effective control processes for both the design and the manufacturing of our products, to ensure that only compliant materials are used and to ensure that HP's specifications are met. 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 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.

Suppliers must ship materials, components, parts and products to HP that comply with the GSE, as specified in our contracts, hardware drawings and specifications. Additionally, suppliers must provide a signed verification statement of compliance with the RoHS Directive.

We use "active verification" to manage the restriction of materials in our products. This includes data sampling and conducting chemical analysis of components and materials by our suppliers and by HP as required. Established supplier corrective action processes are used as needed to resolve any issues that arise.

The compliance verification process has four key steps, each of which includes feedback to the supplier:

• Compliance declaration and tracking – we communicate requirements to suppliers, who confirm that all materials shipped to HP and subject to RoHS are compliant with our contracts, drawings and specifications. We track and document supplier compliance information.
• Supplier process verification – we verify supplier compliance management processes and request that they correct any deficiencies.
• Supplier data validation – we validate supplier compliance declarations through data sampling, as needed.
• Analytical testing – we or our suppliers perform physical or chemical analyses of components or materials, as needed, to validate supplier compliance declarations or on a random sampling basis.

Regrettably, we occasionally find that unapproved materials have entered our supply chain. For example, in 2006 we discovered that a restricted flame retardant was present in the fans of some notebook products. We immediately worked with the supplier to understand the deviation from our specification and to ensure future compliance.

We are working towards being able to provide customers with materials declarations for new HP products as the data becomes available from our supply chain (see Goals).

The timeline lists substances that HP has restricted. Additionally, it identifies substances that HP is considering for possible future materials restrictions.

HP product materials restriction/substitution timeline1

» Download timeline

1 Dates refer to when the materials restrictions were adopted by HP. 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.

	Reduction of materials quantity

HP strives to use less material in products through improved product design and technological advances. For example, HP All-in-One products that combine printers, scanners, copiers and fax machines in a single unit can reduce materials use by up to 40%, compared to separate standalone devices.

As the balance of products HP sells has shifted from PCs to notebooks and from cathode ray tube (CRT) monitors to flat panel displays, material use per unit has decreased. A typical flat panel display uses little more than half the weight of materials in a conventional CRT screen and requires approximately 60% less energy in use. The weight difference between PCs and notebooks is even more dramatic – typically an 80% reduction. Combined, a notebook with an additional flat screen display represents only one-third of the weight of a PC with a CRT. This smaller size saves roughly a third of the packaging weight and decreases energy consumption in transport to customers.

	Innovative and recycled materials

HP works with suppliers to identify materials that will reduce the environmental impact of HP's products and that of our customers.

We evaluate the total life cycle, environmental impact and cost of any new material, and we strive to identify substitute materials that have lower total environmental and health impacts than the materials they replace. It can be difficult to confirm claims for new materials because they may not have been researched as thoroughly as existing materials. For example, we cannot yet be confident about materials to replace PVC from wires and cables. Thermoplastic rubber/elastomer (TPR/TPE) and polyethylene-derived hybrids are emerging, but these materials are not sufficiently developed for wide-scale use. Long-term environmental impact assessments and safety approval for these materials have yet to be finalized.

HP has an extensive recycling network which is a potential source of recycled plastics for use in new products. While HP would like to take advantage of this fact, the potential is limited for several reasons. The greatest difficulty is that most recycled plastics contain substances that we have eliminated from our current products. Also, mixed plastics do not have the mechanical properties necessary for use in new IT products, and it is difficult to separate dissimilar plastics during recycling to produce a homogenous material. Finally, logistical constraints limit our ability to move large volumes of material from the regions where recycling is conducted to the regions where most new products are made. Recycling is an area in which we continue to look for improvements.

	The future

We continue to reduce the environmental impacts of materials in our products, with input from our new Stakeholder Advisory Council. We are educating our customers on the environmental impacts of our products, including our materials choices.

Several countries are developing regulations similar to the RoHS Directive. We work with industry organizations such as the American Electronics Association and the European Information and Communications Technology Association to encourage harmonized approaches, and we are actively participating in the development of China's RoHS-like legislation. Regulators increasingly ask us to share the details of our verification programs, as an example of industry best practice.

A global trend in materials regulation is to move from ensuring that a few specific substances are not in a product (for example, EU RoHS) to reporting of specific substances that are present (for example, the EU's REACH Directive). This trend will require significant data collection and aggregation processes throughout the supply chain. HP is evaluating several approaches to respond to this trend.