In the past, I blogged on how you might tune into the “Green” aspects of LaserJet printing in your work environment in “Turn your Laser Printers Green.” We’ve also discussed how HP Instant-on Technology allows you to keep your printers in “powersave mode” in order to conserve energy. Now I’ll switch gears to talk about how HP is doing the same around the Earth Day Celebration, and in everyday earth-friendly processes. Many of these earth-friendly awareness activities are internal and aren’t highly publicized. For instance:
- Many HP employees have participated in the World Wildlife Fund’s (WWF’s) “Time for Change” Campaign--taking place in the 50 days leading up to Earth Day, April 22nd.
- HP has launched an internal, nationwide coin collection and coin count challenge to support the organization’s global conservation efforts—also donated to the WWF.
- Free computer hardware recycling for employees.
- Many HP sites are organizing volunteer opportunities like planting trees and other restoration efforts.
- There’s an internal Contest for employees to offer up their best suggestions for how HP can reduce its environmental impact.
- We’re offering the new HP DeskJet F4140 Energy Star All-in-One Printer through 1,600 Wal-Mart stores—including free recycling!
One of the more tangible areas that my LaserJet Team has been focusing on is the area of ease of setup, which by the way, equals a more green approach to things like packaging for HP LaserJets, as you can witness in this video showing how LaserJets use much less packaging than the competition.
On a corporate scale, HP has committed to reducing global energy use by 20% by 2010. This includes redesigning packaging for printer cartridges in order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by about 37 million pounds in 2007. This is in addition to ongoing HP efforts to reduce greenhouse gases. You might ask: Why is HP so committed to the environment? Jim Frey, HP’s Corporate Environmental Strategies Manager states:
“As a major global company, we have an opportunity to make a positive impact on something that’s not only socially important, but also responds to the needs of our customers, our investors, and our employees. We want to encourage our employees to serve as HP "ambassadors" for the environment wherever they live and work. They can help remind others that each of us has the power to make a big difference when it comes to the environment, particularly by reducing our own energy use and recycling used hardware and printing supplies."
In fact, HP products—like HP Virtual Rooms and the Halo Collaboration Studio—make it so you don’t have to travel in order to collaborate with colleagues, partners and customers face to face. HP employees, and a number of cutting edge companies, like DreamWorks Animation use this conferencing system to reduce employees' need to travel—making energy conservation even easier to accomplish. In addition, HP employees now have a carbon calculator that measures the environmental impact of travel.”
During the Earth Day celebration period, Chris Brown, an HP software architect and volunteer with the non-profit Climate Change Project, is traveling to several HP sites in the U.S. to discuss climate change and HP’s efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. HP is also hosting a WWF climate scientist, Lara Hansen to educate employees on the joint HP-WWF initiative on climate change. These will be webcast, so that HP employees around the world won’t miss out.
While I believe this is meaningful work, this work is never really done. Vendors like HP need to continue to innovate in this area, making steady and incremental contributions to improve the environmental friendliness of our products. Feel free to comment below on how your company is putting your best “Green Footprint” forward . . .
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