CSR in Europe, Middle East and Africa : carbon footprint

WWF video: ‘Let the clean economy begin’

ulrikehaug — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 08:32:00 GMT

I just came across a video by WWF called 'Let the clean economy begin'. It talks about the business opportunities that arise for companies that strive to be leaders in a low carbon economy. They also highlight the companies that have joined ‘Climate Savers’, a programme by WWF that encourages large companies to reduce their carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. Collectively, the companies have pledged to reduce 50 million tonnes of CO2 emissions by next year.

Some of you might also recognize my colleague Pierre Delforge, who appears in a brief interview.

Have a look at the video and let me know what you think. There’s also a website about the Clean Economy campaign with case studies by the companies that joined ‘Climate Savers’.

Ulrike Haug, CSR Stakeholder Programmes, HP EMEA

(Please visit the site to view this media)

Transforming the business model: the environmental case for digital printing

Jean-PierreLeCalvez — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 13:04:00 GMT

Travelling in the Metro today made me notice how many Parisians read books—rather than newspapers—on their way to work. Ballpark calculation: there were probably five books for every three newspapers in the train carriage. Quite the opposite from London, where the majority of commuters lose themselves behind newspapers (free ones for the great majority). But it brought me back to some numbers I read not long ago: did you know that more than 30 percent of printed books are never sold and eventually destroyed and re-pulped? And that roughly ten percent of newspaper printing is simply wasted?

But more on that shortly.

I’ve been following last week’s environment news closely, as have many others at HP. Sustainability is now integral to every part of our business, and these updates are particularly timely: not only are we seeing significant returns on HP’s own environmental goals and commitments; we’re also seeing the uptake of sustainable practices by customers really hitting an upward curve. Economic downturn or not, businesses continue to invest in green IT, hitting compliance targets but also realizing significant bottom-line benefits. Good environmental practices simply make for good business. The majority of our larger customers now have systematic environment policies in place, and small and medium-size businesses (SMBs) are quickly catching up. Many of the HP initiatives announced in the last few days are backed by strong customer demand for tools and advice that can help them ‘go green’ at a low cost—and that’s significant.

Last week’s news was also big for printing. One of the announcements that caught my attention was our work around the SMART 2020 report. Published recently by the Climate Group, this report quantified the carbon emissions of the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) sector based on growth projections through the year 2020, and examined where the industry could enable emission reductions across various areas. At HP we set out to evaluate the report’s findings and apply its premises specifically to printing. The results were revelatory. We estimated, for example, that the carbon footprint of printing was something close to 850 million tonnes in C02 equivalents.

The opportunities to reduce this impact are huge. We are addressing this in multiple ways—investing in green technology and R&D, driving resource efficiency straight into print hardware and consumables, and better educating buyers with more robust product labelling and guidance, amongst others. But the bigger picture is about the transition from analog to digital printing, which is having a profound impact on the print business across the board.

When we think of printing, we mostly think of office or home printing. This is the bedrock of digital printing: the printing of documents from digital files. Yet digital printing represents less than ten percent of printed paper volumes worldwide. All the rest is printed on offset—analog—technology. This includes most of the newspapers, magazines and books that comprise over half of the paper volume used in printing around the world. Huge set-up costs mean that offset processes require printing in large batches in order to be economically viable. The result? You heard it: up to 30 percent of traditional book stock is unsold and eventually re-pulped, up to 11 percent of newspaper printing is waste and 20-30 percent of marketing collateral from offset printing methods is sitting on shelves, discarded or rendered obsolete before use.

Digital processes are driving nothing less than a total transformation of printing and the workflow processes linked to it—from data capture through to storage, distribution and output. On-demand digital publishing enables printing when and where it is needed, and in the quantity needed—vastly reducing the cost of waste, transport, warehousing and outdated inventory. Variable data printing allows for rapid prototyping of documents as well as customization of print media that creates efficiencies and makes materials more effective and impactful. From the ‘print and distribute’ model of yore the industry now shifts to ‘distribute and print’, with printing carried out close to where it is needed. Shorter-run printing becomes economically viable, transforming the business models of print service providers (PSPs) and reducing waste associated with make-ready and change-over in traditional printing operations.

HP is making a concerted push to drive an industry transition from analog to digital printing. We estimate that, from this transition alone, the opportunity exists to reduce the impact of printing by 251 million tonnes, CO2 equivalents, by the year 2020. To provide perspective, this is nearly equivalent in size to the impact of the entire telecommuting industry. The opportunity is huge and we’re greatly excited.

There are a few calls to action here. Vendors like HP need to continue investing in technology and driving training and education around the benefits of digital printing. For Print Service Providers, it’s about implementing low-waste business models based on shorter runs, and pursuing value-add business through customized content. Print buyers should look to include digital printing in environmental purchasing guidance and specifications, and adopt print-on-demand strategies to avoid warehousing and obsolescence.

Now back to Parisians preferring their books over their newspapers: Does that make us more cultured or less informed?

Jean-Pierre Le Calvez

Vice President, Marketing, Imaging and Printing Group EMEA

Corporations are committed to reducing carbon emissions but action is lacking

jeanne2007 — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 13:16:00 GMT

Karl wants to share some news about the current status of carbon emission transparency along the supply chain. Enjoy reading, Jeannette

Corporations are committed to reducing carbon emissions but action is lacking

A recent survey by Accenture, a global consultancy caught my attention as it is linked to my entry of HP’s plan to decarbonise the supply chain in December. Over 250 supply chain executives were interviewed regarding their commitment and strategy to reduce carbon emissions. The results made me think. Although the majority of participating companies are committed to reducing carbon emissions, only a few have valid strategies in place to do so: Only 10% of participating companies track the carbon emissions and acquire the necessary data about the carbon footprint in their supply chain. Moreover, more than one third have no idea of the overall emissions in their supply chain. You can find further details about the survey results here.

Despite these negative results, the survey still reveals some positive points: More than 75% of respondents stated that they have participated in different green initiatives to manifest their commitment to lower carbon emissions. The willingness is there and that is important. But we can only reduce carbon emissions if we act accordingly. In December we released our emissions data, which represents more than 80% of our company’s costs for materials. In the long run we plan to establish a tool set and methods which support our suppliers in analysing carbon emissions. This will help us to further reduce the carbon footprint in our supply chain. I will keep you updated how this project develops.

Karl Daumüller, Programme Manager and SC SER Lead Auditor

PS: Jay Celorie, HP Global Programme Manager for Supply Chain Energy provided some further insights into HP’s decarbonising strategy. You can listen to the podcast here

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

New podcast: Transparency in environmental standards

jeanne2007 — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 14:43:00 GMT

Following up with Karl’s blog entry on the transparency of our suppliers’ emission, I would like to share a podcast with Jay Celorie, HP Global Program Manager for Supply Chain Energy, who talks in more detail about our long-term programme. To listen to the podcast, click here. Enjoy!

Jeannette Weisschuh, Director of Global Citizenship, HP EMEA

Sustainable practices in IT: a sober assessment

jeanne2007 — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 13:27:00 GMT

At the beginning of this month, Gartner, an information technology research and advisory company, and the Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF) published a report focusing on the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) industry and its commitment to fighting climate change. The assessed sustainability practices included climate change strategies within companies as well as their initiatives to support their clients in climate saving activities.

Dennis Pamlin, Global Policy Advisor, WWF, called this report a “sober assessment of the situation in the IT industry” on his blog.

The report provides a good overview of existing climate change strategies in the ICT industry. It provides highlights but it points also to things that need improvement. There are certainly some leaders in the industry with well established strong environmental programmes, while at the same time there are companies which still need guidance and which are not familiar with the most efficient ways to combat climate change - yet.

I would like to stress the word YET. Climate change is a tremendous challenge which cannot be solved easily. Together with Fujitsu, BT and IBM we scored well on all five categories (environmental basics, supply chain basics, carbon basics, carbon delivery and carbon champions). We don’t want to rest on our laurels and we must maintain our commitment. The latest news is that we disclosed our suppliers’ carbon emissions, which Karl wrote about his blog entry.

It is great to see that many companies have developed good climate change strategies and we should learn from each other.

Jeannette Weisschuh, Head of Global Citizenship, HP EMEA

Let’s make carbon emissions transparent

jeanne2007 — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 13:28:00 GMT

I asked my colleague Karl, Programme Manager and SC SER Lead Auditor, to share some supply chain updates. Enjoy, Jeannette.

Let’s make carbon emissions transparent

I have had such an exciting month. I just came back from the Ethical Supply Chain Summit in Berlin organised by Ethical Corporation, which focused on supply chain transparency, including the measurement of carbon emissions.

As you might have read, we have announced our intention to disclose our carbon emissions along our supply chain. This is a big step forwards and it corresponds to the rising demands of civil society. HP is actually the first IT company to do this and we hope that, by disclosing our carbon emissions data, we will be able to encourage other companies to follow suit.

The process starts with disclosing the carbon emissions data from our largest first-tier suppliers. We then forward the data along our complete supply chain in order to investigate further emissions reductions. To give you an example, we recently conducted a carbon disclosure survey among our suppliers in cooperation with the Carbon Disclosure Project.

We are eager to advance the methods for quantifying and reporting product and supply chain greenhouse gas emissions, which is why we will become (when? soon?) a member of the Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Protocol Supply Chain Initiative - an initiative designed to specifically build a new generation of credible and effective programmes for tackling climate change.

Measuring a multinational company’s carbon footprint is a challenging task and it is time to take on that challenge. This is also an exciting long-term project. I am proud to be part of it and to spread the word and I am eager to hear from you on how you too would meet this challenge.

Karl Daumüller, Programme Manager and SC SER Lead Auditor

Managing global supply chains and a company’s carbon footprint

jeanne2007 — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 11:37:00 GMT

I recently read in the newsletter “McKinsey Quarterly” an interesting article about managing global supply chains.

Operations and other senior executives worldwide were asked about their supply chain strategies, goals and the factors that influence the strategies and goals and how their corporations react to these factors. The results speak for themselves: Supply chain risks are increasing and supply chain goals are hard to meet due to product and service complexity, higher energy prices and increased financial volatility.

What grasped my attention was the result that environmental concerns, like climate change seem to have only minor influences on supply chain strategies. Reducing a company’s carbon footprint is rather at the end of supply chain priorities. At the top of the list are cost reduction, improving customer service and bringing products faster to the market.

I guess the reason for this result lies in the complexity of the issue. A research report sponsored by Fujitsu shows that the majority of CIOs surveyed find carbon footprint calculations unclear and confusing. There is a disagreement on which outsourced activities should still be included in the carbon footprint calculations.

I would like to pose the question here of how you deal with the complexity of calculating your company’s carbon footprint. I am looking forward to your comments.

Jeannette Weisschuh, Head of Global Citizenship, HP EMEA