CSR in Europe, Middle East and Africa : Sustainability

Winners of 2009 Ashridge Sustainable Innovation Award announced

ulrikehaug — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 11:41:00 GMT

You might have seen my earlier blog entries about our support for the Ashridge Sustainable Innovation Award and the video produced by WWF to support the award. Today, I am pleased to share with you the names of the winners of the essay competition!

First place went to Jonathan Alexander from the University of Bath, second was awarded to Luc Petit from Ashridge Business School and Srikanth Madani from the University of St. Gallen came third. They were awarded their prizes (EUR 7,000; EUR 5,000 and EUR 3,000 respectively plus career advice from Spencer Stuart) on Monday at the Swedish EU Presidency Conference called ‘Eco-efficient Economy – Towards Innovative and Sustainable Competitiveness’.

If you want to learn more about the winners and the Ashridge Sustainable Innovation Award, which was supported by HP, EABIS and WWF, you can listen to a podcast with Matthew Gitsham from Ashridge Business School and Jonathan and Srikanth or read our feature story.

If you’d like to read the 3,000 word essays by Jonathan, Luc and Srikanth, you can also download the Award Publication, which includes all the shortlisted essays.

Ulrike Haug

Sustainable procurement: 80 % of respondents invest and the trend is increasing

vp9a83272 — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 10:24:00 GMT

As one of HP’s supply chain auditors, I always look for news and best practices relating to responsible supply chain management and procurement. This summer HEC Paris and EcoVadis published an interesting study: The Sustainable Procurement Benchmark report. The study is based on a questionnaire which was sent to procurement executives in 95 of Europe’s largest corporations. Here are my personal highlights of the study.

It is good to read that around 75% of respondents take Corporate Social Responsibility issues into consideration when they go to the market. What is more relevant for me, however, is to see that nearly a third of the respondents use CSR as selection criteria. That is good news and I would think that this number will increase even more. For us at HP, sustainable and ethical practices undertaken by our suppliers are decisive factors when we consider them for inclusion in our supplier base. Our regular evaluations and audits aim to ensure that our Social and Environmental standards based on the EICC (Electronics Industry Code of Conduct) are met by our suppliers’ factories.

The final highlight of the study from HEC Paris and EcoVadis is that around three quarters of respondents apply sustainable procurements as a measure for supplier performance. This is an acceptable high percentage, isn’t it? Sustainable procurement is at the top of the agenda and the study indicates that it is there to stay.

For those companies who are interested in learning more about responsible supply chain management, they can visit the CSR Europe portal. Whether you are a buyer or supplier, you can find a wide set of available standards and codes and a lot of other materials on best practices relevant to a sustainable supply chain.

I am always on the look out for supply chain or procurement studies. If you come across some, please let me know.

Karl Daumüller, SC SER Lead Auditor

New WWF study: Go where the jobs are. Go green

jeanne2007 — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 13:42:00 GMT

In economic hard times reports about layoffs and wage-cutting dominate the news agenda. A new WWF study, however, provides much more positive news and shows real opportunities. The report actually discusses how ’green industries’ such as renewable energy, green transport and energy-efficient goods and services are creating jobs. Currently, there are more jobs in those industries than in industries such as mining, gas or steel. The prospects, therefore, are that jobs in the former industries will rise, whilst jobs in the latter are falling.

To read the summary of the report click here and to read the full report, click here.

WWF does great work and publishes frequent reports on important issues. Last year, for example, WWF published a report entitled ’The potential global CO2 reductions from ICT use: Identifying and assessing the opportunities to reduce the first billion tonnes of CO2’ which addresses the need for and potential of energy efficient ICT solutions.

Jeannette Weisschuh, Director Global Citizenship, HP EMEA

Video about HP’s power to change campaign

ulrikehaug — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 13:47:00 GMT

For those of you interested in HP’s power to change campaign, here is a video that illustrates the main essence of our Power to Change campaign. Thought you might enjoy this. We definitely need more ‘Dougs’ in the office!

Ulrike Haug, CSR Stakeholder Programmes, HP EMEA

(Please visit the site to view this media)

Turn off idle computers and join HP’s Power to Change campaign

ulrikehaug — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 08:21:00 GMT

HP has just launched a campaign called Power To Change which encourages users to turn off computers when they’re not in use. Not a big deal, you think? I was surprised to read that, in the US alone, only 36 per cent of business computers are turned off at the end of the day.* So, even if you already turn off your idle computer, the likelihood that your colleagues or friends are doing the same is not high.

So with this campaign, you can help to raise awareness and encourage people to save energy. Just go to the ‘Spread the Word’ section on www.hp.com/powertochange and send an email to colleagues, friends and family members.

On the website you can see what our joint efforts amount to: They show how many people are participating around the world; how CO² emissions are saved by turning off computers and how these figures compare in terms of cars that could be taken off the road.

To get more information, you can also visit the Power To Change blog where HP environment and CSR experts blog about the campaign and give useful tips on how to ‘green’ your office. The power to change is in our hands!

Ulrike Haug, CSR Stakeholder Programmes

*Source for computers left on every night (US): Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratories, After-hours Power Status of Office Equipment and Inventory of Miscellaneous Plug-Load Equipment, Report No. 53729, January 2004.

HP announces company-wide environment goals and additions to Eco-Solutions programme

ulrikehaug — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 13:18:00 GMT

I just briefly wanted to highlight an announcement that HP released today. It provides news from across the company, highlighting new environmental goals as well as new products and services in the HP Eco Solutions programme.

The announcement includes a real wealth of information from different HP businesses and we in the CSR team felt it would be good to zoom in one or two items. I’ve therefore asked some representatives from across HP in EMEA to be guest bloggers on the CSR Blog over the coming weeks and to explain to us in greater detail HP’s environmental strategy for their particular products or services.

So keep watching this space if you’d like to get some deeper insights into what was covered in today’s announcement.

Ulrike Haug, CSR Stakeholder Programmes

Computerweek showcases Top Green IT users and vendors

jeanne2007 — Fri, 22 May 2009 11:49:00 GMT

Being green has been top of the agenda for some time now and it is here to stay. Computerworld magazine recently published its annual list of Top Green IT Organisations. The article honours Top Green IT Users as well as Top Green IT vendors. Citing many examples, Ellen Fanning, author, shows how it pays off to be green. Financial services provider State Street Corp., for example, achieved energy savings through server consolidation. Other companies have virtualised their desktops or tackled their energy consumption through sensors to see where and how energy can be saved. In addition to judging the Top 12 Green IT users, the article also honours the Top Green IT vendors. I am delighted to see that, in this list, we jumped from 7th place last year to Number 2 this year.

I can really recommend reading the article to get inspired on how energy can be saved. You can read the article here

Jeannette Weisschuh, Director of Global Citizenship, HP EMEA

WWF movie on Sustainable Innovation supports Ashridge Award

ulrikehaug — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 13:06:00 GMT

WWF has just published a great video to support the Ashridge Sustainable Innovation Award. The video aims get students participating in the essay award to think differently about satisfying our needs in tomorrow’s low-carbon economy.

In his blog, Dennis Pamlin, Global Policy Advisor at WWF, says that this is probably the first ever movie that demonstrates the need to move from a product perspective to a service perspective and to drive innovation from a sustainability perspective. I think it’s very nicely done and captures well what we want students to think about when writing their essays on Sustainable Innovation. See for yourself here:

The Ashridge Sustainable Innovation Award is run by Ashridge Business School and supported by EABIS, WWF and HP. It’s open to all MBA students in Europe, the Middle East and Africa as well as all master-level students at HP-linked universities. We just postponed the deadline for award entries until 3 May 2009 to allow for more Sustainable Innovation Workshops to be held by WWF across the region. To see which business schools and universities Dennis Pamlin will be visiting, go to the Ashridge website.

I attended one of the workshops at the University of St. Gallen last month. It was great to see how the MBA students in St. Gallen got very excited about the topic of sustainable innovation and started discussing their ideas of what it takes to for businesses to thrive in a low-carbon economy.

You can receive regular updates about the award by signing up to our Facebook Fan Page.Post your comments or questions about the award here!

Ulrike Haug CSR Communications, HP EMEA

CSR reports and their content

jeanne2007 — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 11:46:00 GMT

At the beginning of this month a study about CSR reports caught my attention, most especially because we are currently in the final stages of finalising our Global Citizenship Report. This will be launched on March 31 both online and in a condensed PDF-version. Click here for our Global Citizenship Report page.

Ernst&Young conducted research about the content of sustainability reports. The main findings of the research are that the spectrum of CSR reports is too broad. Corporations focus on completeness instead of core issues.

Ernst & Young studied around 100 sustainability reports from European corporations and focused on six quality criteria: stakeholder management, the balance between positive and negative positioning, readability, comparability, reliability and corporate governance structure. Let me highlight two conclusions:

Firstly, the majority of reports misses the reasoning behind the stakeholder selection and does not provide information about how the company approaches criticism from its stakeholders. Ernst & Young say it is important to create transparency and to show how sustainability is integrated into business practices.

Secondly, corporations have the tendency to focus on positive messages and achievements. Of course the reason behind a CSR report is to talk about a company’s achievements, but it should equally talk about those aspects that did not go well in the previous year. I have only highlighted some findings. To read the full report, please click here.

Reports have a tendency to cover every aspect - but only on the surface. Focus and details are missing. Studies such as the one from Ernst & Young are necessary to help corporations (including us, HP) see how we can further improve CSR reporting.

We have addressed the issue of giving sufficient detail vs. providing a good overview by producing two versions of the report: We have a full online version, which provides detailed information on our core areas. We also have a version that specifically addresses our enterprise and public sector customers and covers their particular topics of interest in a 20-page PDF document.

For several years we have highlighted achievements as well as areas for improvement and critical stakeholder feedback. I hope, therefore, that you will find that our Global Citizenship report addresses some of the issues mentioned above. Visit our Report website on March 31 to see for yourself.

Jeannette Weisschuh; Director of Global Citizenship, HP EMEA

SAP goes green

jeanne2007 — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 15:00:00 GMT

I have just seen a pretty exciting announcement from SAP, saying that they have recently hired a Chief Sustainability Officer to strengthen their green company strategy.

Of course it is essential that a sustainability strategy is supported from the top of a company and that sustainability is embedded into a company’s business strategy. It is just as essential to get employees involved, so that they live and breathe the green company strategy and make it real.

What are your experiences with involving employees and honoring their green strategy engagement? At HP, for example, we have local sustainability networks in place with many volunteers who support our green company strategy (incl. link to article on sustainability network).There are definitely many more success stories out there, which could be highlighted here!

Jeannette Weisschuh, Director of Global Citizenship, HP EMEA

JustMeans and the Financial Times announce The Social Innovation Award Winners

ulrikehaug — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 15:29:00 GMT

Last week JustMeans and the Financial Times announced the winners of The Social Innovation Award, which was sponsored by HP. I was very excited to hear about HP sponsoring this award. When I first heard about it from my colleagues in the U.S., I was curious to find out which different size companies the jury – including Bonnie Nixon Gardiner, our Director for Environmental Sustainability - would choose.

The winners are:

‘Large Company’

Procter & Gamble and REI

‘Small to Medium Size Company’

Equal Exchange

‘New Venture’

Clear Standards

Have a look at the Award website to learn about why the jury chose these companies. I was especially interested in Clear Standards which, according to their company profile on JustMeans, offers enterprise "Sustainability 2.0" software to help organisations measure, mitigate and monetise environmental impacts. Let me know what you think about the judges’ decisions. And if you’re not familiar with JustMeans, visit their platform which provides news, job offers and a social network for people interested in issues of sustainability and responsible business practice.

Ulrike Haug, CSR Communications, HP EMEA

Join a live webcast with WWF and Gartner on Low Carbon and Environmental Sustainability Leadership

jeanne2007 — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 13:00:00 GMT

I would like to provide you with details of an up-and-coming live webcast with Dennis Pamlin of World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and Simon Mingay of Gartner Research. They will be discussing the results of research on Low Carbon and Environmental Sustainability in the Information and Communications Technology Sector.

The webcast takes place on Tuesday 24 February from 17:00 to 18:00 CET. You can find more information about the webcast and register here

I would be happy to hear your feedback of the webcast after the event.

Jeannette Weisschuh, Director of Global Citizenship, HP EMEA

Climate Futures report – scenarios for a climate-changed world

ulrikehaug — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 11:41:00 GMT

Last week, HP Labs and Forum for the Future, a renowned UK-based sustainable development organisation, announced a report called ‘Climate Futures’. Unlike many other reports on climate change that we’ve seen recently, this report doesn’t focus on narrowly on environmental impacts and geographical changes but analyses the economic, political, social and psychological consequences of climate change. It describes five possible scenarios that result from different responses to climate change. I think it’s a very interesting, sometimes unsettling read.

The report is based on consultations with 60 climate change experts from across different sectors and countries. I believe it provides organisations with a good outlook into possible futures and allows them to consider and prepare for possible changes ahead. I personally hope it will encourage organisations to think about what their role can be in creating a more positive future. We still have a choice today, but the longer we wait, the more difficult it will be.

James Goodman of Forum for the Future is one of the authors of the report and gives a good overview of the most important findings in his blog.

I’ve copied below a summary of the five possible futures that the report identifies.

Let me know what you think!

Ulrike Haug
CSR Communications
HP EMEA

FIVE POSSIBLE FUTURES IN 2030

Efficiency First. Rapid innovation in energy efficiency and novel technologies have created a low-carbon economy with little need for changes in lifestyle or business practice. Artificially-grown flesh feeds hundreds of millions, supercomputers advise governments, and eco-concrete walls protect the USA’s eastern seaboard generating power from the waves and tides.
The result is an increasingly individualistic, consumerist and fast-moving world, which relies on ever more complex systems. Some call it a golden age of technology and freedom, others a shaky house of cards at a growing risk of crashing down.

Service Transformation. Carbon is one of the most expensive commodities, businesses have shifted to selling services instead of products, and good citizens share with their neighbours. No-one owns a car – it is far too expensive – and athletes have just staged the world’s first virtual Olympics, staying at home and competing in cyberspace.

NATO is ready to go to war if necessary to enforce the 2020 Beijing Climate Change Agreement, and water shortages have already forced the abandonment of Central Australia and Oklahoma. The dramatic transformation in business has been painful, with rising unemployment in the old high-carbon sectors. Booming mega-cities are only just managing to cope and fuel poverty is a huge problem.

Redefining Progress. The global depression of 2009-18 forced governments to regulate the economy tightly and encouraged citizens to put greater priority on quality of life than on making money. Countries compete to score highest in the World Bank’s Wellbeing Index and the EU Working Time directive sets a limit of 27.5 hours a week. The trend is towards economic resilience and simpler, more sustainable lives, but ‘free-loaders’ plunder resources, several big cities have set up as ‘havens of real capitalism’ and some governments are aggressively pro-growth.

Environmental War Economy. Talks about a post-Kyoto Treaty broke down and a global pact was only signed in 2017. Governments enforced tough action to make up for lost time, reshaping their economies to focus all resources on climate change.

Civil liberties have been stripped away. In some countries you need a license to have children and, if you go over your household energy quota, the carbon monitor will turn off your appliances. Climate refugees from Bangladesh and the Pacific islands make up 18% of New Zealand’s population and are expected to boost Antarctica’s population to 3.5 million by 2040.

Protectionist World. The 2012 Climate Agreement collapsed amid accusations of cheating and undeclared power stations. Globalisation fractured into protectionist blocs as countries launched go-it-alone strategies and fought violent wars over scarce resources. Soldiers fighting for nations and businesses are waging war over oil, gas and gold in the thawing north-west passage.

Violent factions exploit the chaos to launch devastating bio-chemical attacks. Cyber-terrorists operating from safe havens in failed states have already bankrupted two multinationals. Action to mitigate climate change is all but abandoned.

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