CSR in Europe, Middle East and Africa

Sustainable from bottom up

jeanne2007 — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 17:29:00 GMT

There are many best practices out there which demonstrate that company activities are most successful if they are actively supported by its employees. This is definitely true for HP´s sustainability employee networks at 20 major HP sites around the world. One of the main tasks of these self-organised local sustainability teams is to actively contribute to strengthen HP´s green company strategy.

Last Saturday, HP organised a picnic for 3,000 employees and their families at the HP site in Boeblingen/Germany. HP volunteers of the Boeblingen Sustainability Network organised a booth to educate visitors of the picnic on environmentally sound practices.

For example, in the invitation to the picnic employees where asked to take the train or to cycle instead of coming by car. Everyone who followed this advice received a cup as a a gift to decrease the usage of plastic cups in the office. Or on a bike connected to a generator, employees could experience the different amount of energy required for various light bulbs or for running a TV. Children where invited to fill in an environmental quiz and to participate in a painting competition on the environment.

The winners received prizes related to environmental projects like an adoption package for a WWF p olar bear. At the same time the employees from the sustainability network were able to advertise their activities and invited new members to contribute to the network with other bright ideas.

It has been pretty amazing to see the high interest of HP employees in the work the volunteers had done as part of the Boeblingen Sustainability Network. While I was at the booth I had many inspiring conversations with employees who have provided many additional ideas to further increase the impact of the work of the sustainability network.

My feeling is that due to the motivating spirit of the sustainability team at the Boeblingen site we can expect quite a few follow-up environmental projects along the lines of "there is nothing good, except you do it".

Jeannette Weisschuh, Head of Corporate Affairs, HP EMEA

Three years in a row – HP Environment Days

jeanne2007 — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 08:48:00 GMT

I can’t believe how fast time goes. I still remember hearing about our very first Environment Days in Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) in 2006. I am very pleased to see how our reach has increased from 16 sites in 11 countries in 2006, to 24 sites in 15 countries in 2007 to finally over 31 sites this year. I want to congratulate our country teams who organized the events. Well done!

We mark the UN World Environment Day (June 5) by encouraging our employees to organize environment-related activities in their offices, for example collecting out-dated IT equipment, inviting external speakers or organizing any other event which brings environmental issues into focus.

I would like to point at some of this year’s highlights but I’d also like to say that all events were highlights in themselves. Portugal for example organized a fair outside the office building where art and craft items and organic products were sold. Besides, our Portuguese team organized a take-back event where 28 pieces of IT equipment were collected.

Leixlip in Ireland picked up the theme of the World Environment Day “Kick the CO2 Habit” and set up a car exhibition of low CO2 emission cars in front of the office. Representatives of the car companies provided additional information. To also promote emission-free traveling there was a display of the latest bicycles. Finally, our employees at Leixlip encouraged the canteen to display the amount of food miles each dish on the menu had incurred that day.

Each year I hear about these great initiatives and I am impressed by our colleagues’ enthusiasm and creativity. I talked to some colleagues and they described their event as a great initiative which received positive feedback from our employees. I cannot wait until next year’s Environment Days.

Jeannette Weisschuh, Head of Corporate Affairs, HP EMEA

Solar Powered Car - the start of a long journey

jeanne2007 — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 12:23:00 GMT

I am the education business manager for the Personal Systems Group (PSG) at HP United Kingdom (UK) and I would like to tell you about a great project we are supporting: Solar Powered Cars.

Although a worldwide sponsorship (with solar races across the globe), given the group running and designing the car are UK based, I am the main liaison point for HP with the team and ensured the sponsorship got off the ground.

HP has recently announced that it is sponsoring the Cambridge University Eco Racing (CUER) team, including providing its latest technology that will be used to enhance the design, build and operation of the solar racing vehicle as it prepares to race in the 2009 World Solar Challenge.

CUER’s first big test took place in June 2008 when their inaugural car, “Affinity”, drove from Land’s End in Cornwall, UK to John O’Groats in Northern Scotland, using only the power of the sun’s energy. Admittedly, some bad weather along the way - it is British summertime after all - meant that there were a few sections when the car had to be put on a trailer. But all in all, it was a great success.

HP mobile workstations, handhelds and business notebooks were used to manage and analyse solar power consumption, mechanical performance and environmental data. Enabling the support team to tell the driver how to adjust his driving style in order to get the most efficient power consumption and keep driving.

They will be entering the same car in the Zero Rally Africa that travels 4,000 km (2,485 miles) from Victoria Falls in Zambia, via Namibia to Cape Town in South Africa, during 10 days in January 2009, followed by a completely newly designed and built car for the World Solar Challenge on 18-25 October 2009 in Australia. The World Solar Challenge goes from Darwin in the Northern Territories to Adelaide, in South Australia, covering a distance of 3,000 km (1,865 miles). HP's powerful xw8600 workstations will be used to design the new car, which they hope will be a good challenger for solar honours.

I am closely following the team’s progress and am looking forward to the next big test – Zero Rally Africa. At least the weather will be less wet (and somewhat warmer) than during the test drive in the UK.

Thomas O’Kill, Education business manager, HP UK

Web 2.0 and CSR - the excitment has just begun

jeanne2007 — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 07:08:00 GMT

I attended a pretty exciting workshop on CSR and Web 2.0 during SAP´s Sapphire event at the end of May in Berlin. Even if the CSR community and especially companies are only just beginning to make active use of social media, there are great opportunities ahead.

Especially for a more regular stakeholder dialogue Web 2.0 offers strong advantages to help to increase transparency into a company’s CSR strategy and related programmes. James Governor from open-source analyst firm Redmonk has an interesting view on this. Redmonk decided to go green a while ago by setting up a “green” arm to their open source analyst business. According to James, “With the help of Web 2.0, CSR is becoming a window itself - an important gateway between the business and us: individuals, customers and stakeholders." Wow, what a statement!

Another very true comment was made by Dennis Howlett from ZDNet, encouraging companies to include social media more actively into their communication strategy "There is nothing to fear except you have something to hide". Yes, how true even if it is of course important to have tools to measure the success of communication campaigns in place. And this is currently obviously still an area to be further explored in the Web 2.0 space.

James Farrar, VP for CSR at SAP who hosted the workshop even believes that web 2.0 could redefine CSR reporting making it much more dynamic considering stakeholder views from online communities etc. The more you think about the great potential which lies behind the better usage of web 2.0 in the CSR space the more exciting it gets.

And here is another piece of advice from Dennis Howlett "You are not going to get it right. You are going to make mistakes. But there is only one way - go for it!"

Jeannette Weisschuh, Head of Corporate Affairs, HP EMEA

CSR Europe Assembly Meeting - inspiring networking experience

jeanne2007 — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 15:32:00 GMT

Together with representatives from 75 major companies I have been attending this year’s annual assembly meeting from CSR Europe in mid of June in Brussels.

A meeting like this is always a good opportunity to get an overview of the activities of a pretty active enterprise and non-profit organisation (NPO) network organisation and to reflect how this contributes to our own CSR objectives. I believe in 2007, CSR Europe has made great progress in increasing the transparency and awareness of best practices on leading CSR programs.

Looking at the new website and the increase of monthly site visits by 300 percent on 15,000 or the European Marketplace Event which took place in November with more than 600 participants and nearly 90 CSR solutions that have been presented by companies and NPOs - these are impressive results which clearly show the strong engagement of member companies in many ways.

Another great achievement has been the launch of 20 laboratories on break-through CSR topics like responsible supply chain management, eSkills and employability or eco efficiency to mention just a few. Companies across industries, NPOs and EU representatives have set joint objectives around these topics and are addressing burning societal needs together.

The results out of the laboratory work are going to be presented during a major EU event on December 4. At the assembly meeting the enthusiasm around the laboratories became very obvious when the different teams invited the meeting participants to informal discussion rounds where they shared insights into their work. There is still plenty of work to be done but the perspective to address societal needs jointly is of course highly motivating.

Another outcome from a cross-company collaboration which was presented at the assembly meeting is CSR Europe´s first Sustainable Marketing Guide to help all marketeers in the consumer space to communicate more successfully. In addition to the printed guide there is an online game to demonstrate consumers shopping experience and challenges they face in a very lively way. Both the printed guide as well as the online game are available on the CSR Europe website.

Inspired by many best practices and a high interest from meeting participants to learn more about companies’ CSR programs and potentially even collaborate - I can only say I got a lot out of this year’s CSR Europe assembly meeting and I am already looking forward to the next inspiring networking experience.

Jeannette Weisschuh, Head of Corporate Affairs EMEA, HP

Eco Solutions – the highlights

judith.schrempf — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 16:05:00 GMT

Eco Solutions constitutes a large scale program in several ways. First of all, it supports all kinds of customers- from consumers to businesses of all sizes Then, it offers a wide spectrum of tools and services which are designed to reduce the environmental impact of the products, for example, in the form of energy usage. I want to highlight only some of the Eco Solutions Elements.

I am myself a consumer and know how difficult it is to find out which of the many products really is the best in environmental terms. The Eco Solutions Program therefore includes a label which highlights the environmental attributes of products and services.

Besides, Eco Solutions offers a new product portfolio within imaging and printing which includes features reducing the environmental impact. The Auto On/ Auto Off feature is probably the most prominent example. Did you know that up to 66 percent of wasted energy is used up by equipment that hasn’t been turned off over night or on weekends? Well, the Auto On/Auto Off feature is only one example of how our customers can save energy with the Eco Solutions Program.

What I like about Eco Solutions is that it does not only address one or two issues, but it is very comprehensive . Please have a look here (http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/newsroom/press_kits/2008/ipgenvironment/) to find out more about it.

Jeannette Weisschuh, Head of Corporate Affairs, EMEA HP

We are moving - migration to new blogging platform

warren.sander@hp.com — Thu, 22 May 2008 14:00:00 GMT

Over the next two weeks we are migrating to a new blogging platform. During this period we will not be able to update our blog, so will take an early, unvoluntary summer break.

We will be back in full force on June 1, with a whole collection of new entries.
As of tomorrow we can neither post new entries on this blog nor can we receive any comments. So please bear with us until our new site is live and we hope to see you back here on our blog on June 1.

Many thanks for your understanding.

Jeannette Weisschuh, Head of Corporate Affairs, HP EMEA

Reducing energy use and carbon emissions with Thin Client technology

warren.sander@hp.com — Wed, 14 May 2008 08:32:00 GMT

Did you know that the increasing use of thin client systems has already helped reduce global CO2 emissions drastically in the last four years? A recent study by the prestigious Fraunhofer Institute based in Germany revealed some interesting insights.

Compared to normal PCs, thin clients produce up to 50% less energy while in operation. Naturally, such energy reductions are however only helpful if consumers also buy such energy saving products. The study revealed also some information regarding the sales and concluded that the number of sales of thin clients has increased. These are good news.

But besides thin clients there are already many energy saving options available in all other product groups. At HP, we want to reduce the energy consumption of our desktop and laptops by 25 % by the year 2010, relative to 2005 figures. Our desktops consist of various energy-efficient features which save energy and offer higher performance at the same time. An example would be the HP rp5700 Business Desktop PC. It allows our customers to save as much as 80% in power consumption compared with previous-generation systems. .

HP and many other companies are eager to contribute to the reduction of CO2 emissions by reducing the energy usage of its products. In cooperation with WWF we are currently also working on a customer report to demonstrate how ICT solutions can contribute to reduce 1 billion tonnes of CO2 emissions. We are more than happy to provide you with further insights as soon as the report will be available.

Jeannette Weisschuh, Head of Corporate Affairs, HP EMEA

Best practice: Supply Chain Management

warren.sander@hp.com — Mon, 05 May 2008 06:50:00 GMT

I would like to share a best practice of Intel with you today regarding their supply chain management. Intel organizes a Supplier Day on a yearly basis and invites its equipment and material suppliers to talk about their business relation and Intel’s expectations. Such a supplier Day is also useful to discuss about existing partnerships but also to initiate cooperation.

At the event, Intel recognises the best suppliers which receive awards like the Supplier Continuous Quality Improvement (SCQI) award or the Preferred Quality Supplier (PQS) award. I like the idea of such an annual supplier event where you can directly approach certain issues together. My colleagues and I have already talked a lot about the importance of engaging with our suppliers for a sustainable and socially responsible supply chain and I believe we also have good programs underway. As you might know we recently published a list of our suppliers in order to increase transparency and foster further positive changes along our supply chain.

Our approach regarding supply chain management is based on capability building. We work closely with our suppliers and try to provide them with the expertise and skills to operate a sustainable supply chain of their own and teach their own suppliers how to integrate socially responsible and environmentally sound practices in their business operations. You can read about the latest results of our capability approach in the report “Small Suppliers in Global Supply Chains” which was sponsored by the European Commission. The report is based on findings from a project run with HP suppliers and their suppliers in Central and Eastern Europe in cooperation with the Danish Commerce and Companies Agency (DCCA). Read Karl’s blog entry about the project for more detailed information.

In our latest Global Citizenship bulletin [link to article] you can also read or listen to an interview with Mette Andersen, Special Advisor to the DCCA. She talks about the challenges of small and medium sized suppliers. Best practices like the supplier day and awards by Intel show that the industry is aware of the challenges and is working on diverse ways of how to tackle them. If you are aware of further best practices in this field, I would like to invite you to share them with us by posting a comment below.

Jeannette Weisschuh, Head of Corporate Affairs, HP EMEA

Increasing transparency along the supply chain

warren.sander@hp.com — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 10:12:00 GMT

Civil society increasingly demands transparency and consumers would like to have details about how their products are manufactured and by whom. It is not enough anymore to know that a laptop is an HP laptop for example. We acknowledged this demand and were the first IT company to publish a list of our largest suppliers at the beginning of this month.

The list consists of our largest suppliers which represent over 95% of our global procurement expenditures for materials, manufacturing and assembly of our products. We operate the industry’s largest supply chain and therefore we want to lead by example and foster transparency. Hopefully this step will encourage other companies in our industry to follow.

We continuously aim to raise supply chain standards in our industry, specifically when it comes to health & safety for employees and environmental conditions. Another recent example is the final report of a joint project with the Danish Commerce and Companies Agency which provides guidance to small and medium-sized enterprise suppliers on how to leverage from existing management tools and training opportunities to become a more responsible company within a global supply chain.

Since the publication of our supplier list we have received various feedback. In his blog on Business Green, Danny Bradbury critically reviews our supplier list and refers to still existing issues along the supply chain. At the same time he acknowledges positively that we belong to one of the first companies which makes its direct suppliers publicly available.

I consider transparency to be the best way to bring more clarity and maybe also control into the supply chain considering that multinational corporations have an immense network of suppliers worldwide (Walmart has over 60,000 suppliers for example). To my knowledge only very few companies have already published the names of their suppliers like Nike . Are you aware of any further transparency initiatives in other industries? Let me know by posting a comment.

Jeannette Weisschuh, Head of Corporate Affairs, HP EMEA

HP Circle Award: inspiring excellence

warren.sander@hp.com — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 12:38:00 GMT

It is a great honor being selected as a finalist for a global internal communications award: The Circle Awards. Every year we have internal awards to recognize HP communication teams from across the corporation that have delivered excellence in communications. At this point I would like to congratulate my colleague Ewa Lis and her team who won the Circle Award for her Green Week in Poland this year. Well done!

When our team first learned that we were amongst the finalists with one of our CSR projects we were very proud – especially as we were thinking about the many other communication solutions that are out there, and probably are as impactful as ours.

So what a wonderful opportunity to be invited amongst 60 finalists from around the world to a special event in La Jolla, a beautiful spot at the coast line of Southern California. During the event we were introduced to quite a few forefront thinkers in global marketing, book authors and inspiring entrepreneurs and were able to exchange experiences with colleagues from around the world.

In all the presentations and workshops it became in many ways obvious what the success factors for most impactful communication projects are: collaboration, innovation, risk taking, competitiveness, leadership and excellence. This is pretty much what the Circle Award stands for and how the jury has selected the finalists out of nearly 400 entries.

We were selected with our project "Sustainable Innovation Zone (SIZ)" - an internal website we have developed together with WWF to invite our employees to come up with climate-smart customer solution ideas. It has been quite a challenge to launch SIZ in the beginning as we were stimulating new thinking without immediate impact on our business.

Looking at the results of SIZ with 375 solution ideas, the intense dialogue WWF had with our management and business leaders in several countries and now the nomination for the Circle Award: it has been worth it and we are clearly motivated to come up with more award-winning best practices going forward. Thanks to the team of the Circle Award for helping us to bring a wider international perspective to our project.

Jeannette Weisschuh, Head of Corporate Affairs HP, EMEA

“Win-win” situation: sharing social investment experience between EMEA and Asia Pacific

warren.sander@hp.com — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 13:18:00 GMT

Today I am reporting on a fantastic opportunity that was offered to me and one of my American colleagues. As part of the career development programme at HP, HP offers employees to take on “stretch assignments”. These are projects which offer additional experience and provide new insights and learning opportunities by taking HP employees beyond their current responsibilities and skills. I have been offered the opportunity to manage one of HP’s major social investment flagship programmes in the Asia Pacific region. The programme focuses on Microenterprise Development. I will manage it remotely from Europe while my American colleague stays in Singapore for 2 months to manage the day-to-day work for social investments.

As part of this incremental assignment, we went to Singapore for a week at the beginning of this month to participate in hand over meetings from my colleague, who has managed the programme until now. We will be supporting the Asia Pacific and Japan (APJ) region until a permanent replacement for my colleague has been found.

I met with all HP country teams, from Australia, Japan, China, India, Thailand and many other Asian countries. I also talked to our external Centres of Excellence in Thailand and China. The experience has been fantastic so far and it has already been a great learning opportunity for me to understand the socio-economic needs of those local markets.

Whilst I can clearly see that the programmes HP offers are relevant across the globe, each country/region has its specific societal needs. It is important that our social investment programmes focus on those issues that are relevant on the local level. A one size fits all strategy is just not suitable. I share this valuable additional regional experience with my colleagues worldwide as we are currently defining our strategy for the next years.

The programme I am now managing in APJ promotes economic development by providing HP technology and training to non-profit organizations that use technology to bolster job skills, enhance employability and foster entrepreneurship. My colleague, who managed social investments in the past already did a great job in establishing this programme last year and I aim at developing the project in the following ways:

• Increase number of Microenterprise Development Centres from 17 to 35
• Deploy three Train the Trainer modules through our partner Micro-Enterprise-Acceleration Institute (MEA-I)
• Train a minimum of 400 entrepreneurs on the Microenterprise Acceleration curriculum
• Establish three Enterprise Leadership Centres

I am pleased to have the opportunity to help HP APJ to contribute to improving economic viability and quality of life for individuals and communities around the world through investments of HP resources and technology that support economic development, educational opportunity and environmental sustainability.

The economic development programme in APJ resembles our approach to entrepreneurship and education in Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA). I have been responsible for social investment in EMEA since 2006. During that time, we have focused heavily on Entrepreneurship skills training. So far, we deployed 44 MAP (Micro-Enterprise Acceleration Programme) centres and have advanced the programme further to address the high youth unemployment (17% in 2006 in the EU) with GET-IT (Graduate Entrepreneurship Training through IT). We have opened 35 GET-IT centres in 19 countries in 2007 and held three Master Training sessions in Europe, Africa and Russia. This year, we will be building up the network to 70 GET-IT centres in more than 25 countries.

Due to the synergies between the economic development programme in APJ and our entrepreneurship and education programmes in EMEA, my stretch assignment to AJP constitutes a clear win-win situation: I can contribute through my expertise in the Microenterprise skills development, which is very beneficial as we are growing the programme in 10 Asian countries (China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, India, Malaysia, Philippines, Korea, Thailand, Singapore). And I myself will learn a lot about this fascinating and fast growing region as well as their societal needs and I will definitely use my experiences from APJ for my continuing social investment work in EMEA.

I would like to thank the regional and global management for this phenomenal development opportunity and I can only recommend for my other HP colleagues to explore “stretch assignments” as opportunities for growth. I am glad I am working for a company that has the capabilities to offer such type of assignments and opportunities to their workforce.

Daniela Opp, Manager Social Investments and Economic Development, HP EMEA

In the photo below you can see Andrea Gonzales, Rita Sully and me (from left to right)

HP Direct Take Back event boosts IT recycling in Dijon

warren.sander@hp.com — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 14:34:00 GMT

My name is Catherine Martial and I am in charge of Direct Take Back activities (ie activities where HP is directly involved in the collection of used IT equipment) and the implementation of the EU WEEE directive at HP France. I would like to tell you about our latest recycling event which is also a best practice for our social investment activities in France. As a company, we aim to align our social investment programmes with our core business and competencies and focus specifically on economic development and education and environment.

HP is the partner in a campus initiative launched by one of the leading business schools in France, the ESC Dijon-Bourgogne. The school decided this year to launch an initiative called: “100 days for a Green Campus” and aims to educate students and school staff about Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). The initiative was organised by the ESC, in partnership with EDF , the energy provider and HP (supplier of laptop for students) as a leader in the IT sector, supported by the “Green Ambassadors”, a small group of highly motivated students who are involved in Sustainable Development and Environment at the ESC and in Lyon,.

In addition to the organization of several conferences, including one on “eco-design and energy efficiency” presented by Pierre Sicsic, the ESC, with HP’s support, also organized a Direct Take Back event to collect electronic waste, with the aim to educate people on WEEE recycling. The event was organized in partnership with the city of Dijon, the greater urban area Lyon “Le Grand Dijon”, HP, ERP (a provider of environmental services for Grand Dijon) and ENVIE 2E (ERP’s partner, which specializes in dismantling screens).

The collection was a success: 5 tons of material collected. Donors of used computer equipment answered a short questionnaire and could also ask some more questions about the different methods of recycling which were answered by “Green Ambassadors”, the ambassadors of recycling sorting of the Grand Dijon and HP managers.

A particularly pleasant surprise of the event: a “gift” in form of an old printer, delivered by a group of cyclists. The “100 days for a Green Campus” will close on 10 April, marked by a keynote from Veronica Bouhafs-Blanchard, director of HP's international sites in France a conference on “diversity in an ethical company”.

This initiative combines our approach to team up with strong partners and to address educational and environmental issues. I hope to share some further exciting projects in France with you soon.

Catherine Martial, Direct Take Back Supervisor and WEEE; HP France

Our new Global Citizenship Report

warren.sander@hp.com — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 03:09:00 GMT

How do you best communicate a company’s achievement around CSR or Global Citizenship as we call it at HP? Well, we just published our new Global Citizenship Report which can be accessed online at www.hp.com/go/report. I am really pleased with what we have achieved and I would like to share some of the highlights with you.

For the first time we offer an e-guide to provide site visitors with an overview of Global Citizenship at HP. During the tour you can easily dive into more detail at any point.

Another highlight is that we have published a list of our suppliers for the first time. This is novel in our industry. Companies like Nike and Chiquita already publish their suppliers’ names and we have experienced some criticism for not doing it. I think the publication of the supplier list constitutes a big step towards increasing our transparency and hopefully it will inspire other corporations to follow in our footsteps.

Our key Global Citizenship reporting priorities this year are supply chain, climate change, energy; and product re-use and recycling. These topics have dominated our activity during the year.

One example is the way we co-operated with the Danish Government to work with our first and second tier suppliers in Central and Eastern Europe in developing social and environmentally friendly business capabilities. Another example is our collaboration with the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) to investigate how Information and Communication Technology can help reduce CO2 emissions.

Besides these priorities we are maintaining our commitment to doing business with the highest standards of integrity and customer and employee privacy. We have created, for example, a Privacy and Data Protection Governance Board to help establish privacy and data protection policies, practices, procedures and training. We also continue to focus on economic development and education within our Social Investment Approach. We are setting high goals for GET-IT and plan to increase our current network of 35 GET-IT centres to 70 in 27 countries.

This is our seventh annual Global Citizenship report. Since publishing our first report in 2002 we have tried to improve our approach to communicating our Global Citizenship activities by meeting the needs of our customers and other key stakeholders . That is why we also publish a customer report which addresses in detail the issues that our customers are most interested in.

Have a look at last year’s customer report “The hidden component”. This year’s report will be launched in about two months and we are currently working on nine localized EMEA versions of the customer report which we plan to publish in June.

I will keep you updated on progress and, as always, I am keen to receive any feedback or comments on the report – or this blog. Happy reading! .

Jeannette Weisschuh, Head of Corporate Affairs HP, EMEA

EuroNews Video: Save the climate with your computer

warren.sander@hp.com — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 13:54:00 GMT

As part of the European Commission campaign “Sustainable Energy Europe” the European Commission published a video on how to save the climate with your computer. Let me summarize the content of the video, particularly the parts in which HP played a role.

Almost half of all households in Europe have a computer or another information and technology communication (ICT) machine providing economic value but also impacting our environment. This massive use of ICT is a challenge that can be clearly turned into an opportunity - the video shows us how.

Dennis Pamlin from WWF, who is interviewed via videoconferencing, presents two projects on how CO2 emissions can be saved through ICT. He states that with activities like video conferencing, working from home or online billing, 50 million tons of CO2 emissions could be saved. The main message is that ICT creates CO2 emissions but that the sector constitutes at the same time an enormous source to reduce CO2 emissions from other industries (less business travel due to videoconferencing technology for example). The other project he introduces is HP’s work with WWF: We are working together to investigate how ICT can help to reduce 1 billion tons of CO2 emissions.

Roger Benson of Intel mentions the company’s goal of reducing its Greenhouse Gas Emissions by 50 percent. The company supports initiatives like the Climate Savers Computing Initiative, which consists of leading corporations which are working with WWF to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions.. We just recently announced plans to join this initiative as well. I like the ambitious nature of this initiative and the related goals to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Amongst other goals, we pledged to reduce emissions from our operations and the use of our products by six million tons below 2005 levels by 2010..

Chandrakant Patel, HP Senior Research Fellow Enterprise Systems and Software Laboratory, indicates that we have to make sure we decrease energy consumption and material consumption. So we have to minimize the burden of ICT and at the same time maximize fundamental need it fulfills. Again a challenge, but not impossible.

The final example of how computer equipment can save the climate comes from the Scottish Telford College which uses energy efficient HP equipment which is certified with the Energy Star. The college belongs to one of the most energy efficient schools and fosters energy efficient behaviour of its students. They are impressed by the different tactics to save energy like the maximisation of sunlight, the automatic switch off/on of the lights in the room or the automatic shut down of all computers in the college in the evening. Students see how they can save energy and hopefully apply it outside their university life.

Besides improvements in reducing the energy consumption of ICT equipment it is important that each of us acts consciously to reduce the energy consumption of our equipment. On our website we collected various energy saving tips some of which are really easy to implement and can have a big impact on the energy consumption of your IT equipment. If we work from all sides – from the technology and ICT sector, and from the individual and consumer side – we can clearly turn the challenge into a great opportunity.

Jeannette Weisschuh, Head of Corporate Affairs EMEA, HP