Up till a couple months ago, green was on the agenda of most enterprises. Since the financial meltdown has come with its economical difficulties and recession fears. It looks like green is disappearing from the agenda quickly, despite the fact going green can reduce costs, as illustrated by Reuters.. If this is the case, I believe it is a tremendous mistake. Working on their environmental impact helps companies reduce costs and mitigate risks. I also believe it may allow them to increase revenues by taking market share away from their competition.  Let me try to illustrate my point here.

One of the key environmental measurements today is CO2 emissions. This is NOT the only element, but it is an important one as glasshouse gasses seem to impact our planet rather drastically. CO2 emissions have a lot to do with the burning of fossil energy. Again, there is more to it than that, but it is an important contributor. Reducing energy consumption is a way to reduce CO2 emissions, which in turn reduces the importance of a element of large variance in the supply chain. Even if the price of the barrel of oil is back around 50 $, the fact it went all the way to 147$ has been a wakeup call for many companies. If the economy picks up again, it could be back at such levels by the summer. So, the energy cost factor is a volatile one. Reducing its important in the product cost is more than welcome. So, by reducing cost and variance in the cost we have addressed an environmental concern.  Green and costs are not mutually exclusive, as many people believe.

The other element to take into account is that, independently of reducing costs, it remains important to avoid being on the first page of the newspapers due to an environmental issue. This is probably more the case for companies owning a brand, as the brand is typically what suffers of such issues. And this is where risk mitigation comes in. Risk mitigation may cost money, indeed, and in difficult economical times, companies may be tempted not to focus on it. That is like not paying your insurance premiums when things get somewhat tougher. You might be able to get away with it, but there is the remote possibility of an issue that actually may leave you in a desperate financial situation. Aren't insurances there to avoid that?

The last element I want to bring up is the fact that focusing on the environment may increase your business, and I would like to illustrate this approach using a simple case study. Wal-Mart, the US retailer, initiated an "Eco-Challenge" some months ago, pushing their suppliers to submit ideas for the development of products with low amounts of packaging material. Our packaging engineers got working on this and one of them, based in Grenoble - France, came up with a brilliant and simple idea for our notebooks. Often when you buy a notebook, you also buy a carrying case, isn't it? You want to be able to safely transport your notebook. Well, what if HP provides you a notebook with it carrying case. Oh and by the way, let's manufacture that case from 100% recycled material. Rather than putting the notebook in specific packaging for its transport from Asia, we can now use the carrying case to do this. If it protects your notebook when you take it around, it can also do the same when HP's logistics partners transport it, isn't it? The advantage is 97% packaging material reduction. The only packaging left is the cardboard box in which a five notebooks are grouped to facilitate the stacking on the pallet. The consumer goes home with his/her new product in a nice bag and does not need to get rid of packaging material either. Everybody wins in the game. Not only did we win our category during the challenge, we are now also selling the product in the Wal-Mart stores. If you are interested in more details, you may want to look here.

The energy costs associated with running some of our products (eg. PC's) over their lifecycle are two to three times the price of the product itself. How many of us are looking at the actual consumption of a product prior to making a decision. In looking at total cost of ownership, buying the cheapest product may not always be the best solution. Making a product using less energy also benefits the customer. And we hope it increasingly becomes a sale criterion as consumers and businesses alike become more environmental conscious.

During the design of a product many decisions are taken that will affect both the cost and the eco-friendliness of the final product and its supply chain. Having development engineers that understand how to make products "greener", is a tremendous asset to reduce both the cost and environmental impact of the product throughout its whole lifecycle. We call this "Design for the Environment".