- by David Garrels

Last time in the Green Storage blog we talked about ways to minimize the power requirements of storage and the three tools you can use today to save power.  Now, let’s look at some of the things we’re doing at HP to minimize the environmental impact of our products themselves.

We’ve got Product Stewardship teams from each of our product groups looking at many different environmental aspects of our storage products. The main areas are:

Materials Innovation:

Materials innovation at HP means reducing the environmental impact of materials we use for our storage products. We’re looking at three main areas:

1. Materials substitution and elimination. There are still some materials used in computer manufacturing that not very recyclable, including Brominated Flame Retardants (BFRs) and PVCs. We have plans to replace these as soon as possible across the product line.

2. Reduction of materials quantity. We continually look at ways to reduce the amount of material it takes to produce, pack, and ship our products.

3. Innovative and recycled materials. HP is constantly increasing the amount of post-consumer recycled content used in packaging materials and other product design elements.

Product Recycleability & Manufacturing methods:

Our product stewardship teams are also looking at every low-level part in every product with a goal to drive to zero waste, meaning product can be disassembled to the point where every element can be isolated and recycled.

We also take great care that products destined for recycling under our control really gets recycled. There have been some recent press articles about consumer recycling programs where the material just end up in landfills and we strive to make sure that doesn’t happen.

Product End of Life:

HP offers several choices to manage aging or unwanted computing equipment while also minimizing the impact on the environment. Customers can choose to trade in, return for cash, recycle, or donate their equipment.

Low-impact Distribution methods:

We’re even looking at the ways we ship our product around the world – at how we can achieve our business goals of customer delivery times, and at the same time minimize the carbon-dioxide per unit generated in the shipping process. We do this by balancing the mix of air, sea, and ground methods to optimize delivery and minimize CO2 impact.

So – we’re doing a lot at the product level to make sure our storage products have minimal environmental impact. We'd like to hear your thoughts on environmental impact with your computing equipment & data center operations.