name: Helen K. Chang

Organisation: Hewllet Packard HP
 
Address: HP Corporation USA
 
Fax:
 
Subject: Corporate Social Responsibility & EPR  at HP Global Giant IT Products

Message: How HP gains by Corporate Responsibility & Envirojnmental Commitment with all it's business partners.( summary report)

STANFORD BUSINESS SCHOOL CONFERENCE

April 2007 

Some global companies are finding environmental responsibility throughout their supply chains a market imperative with energy costs on the rise and the U.S. government expected to push steadily for reduced carbon emissions,

That understanding drives Hewlett-Packard’s global citizenship agenda, HP senior vice president Tony Prophet, MBA ’86, told an audience at a Stanford conference recently. HP’s efforts to design for the environment, encourage its suppliers to be socially and environmentally responsible, use energy efficiently, and enable product recycling are giving the company a competitive advantage.

HP has the  IT industry’s largest and most complex supply chain, H& spends $50 billion annually to procure materials, components, manufacturing, and distribution services for its products. Therefore, its actions have global implications, he said. “Encouraging responsible supply chain practices has been a core part of our values,” he told more than 200 corporate and academic supply chain management experts gathered at the Stanford Graduate School of Business to exchange ideas and best practices aimed at making the global supply chain more sustainable.

What Prophet called “a passion for social and environmental issues at Hewlett-Packard”

led HP in 2002 to become the first electronics company to establish a supply chain policy on these matters. In 2004, the company also spearheaded the development of an electronic industry code of conduct, which encourages responsible management and operational practices in labor, human rights, health and safety, the environment, and ethics across the industry’s global supply chain.

According to Prophet the main thing  is partnership. “HP is not doing this alone. it has collaborated with other players who share it's supply base to create standards––and  HP drives  suppliers and manufacturers to meet those standards.” That means conducting supplier audits, taking corrective action on non-compliance, and helping suppliers build their technological and cultural capacities for meeting the new HP and industry codes and standards.

HP last year began focusing more on offering carrots than sticks. Through its Focused Improvement Supplier Initiative, it offers monthly social and environmental management training sessions to suppliers in China, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland, among others. Business for Social Responsibility, a research and consulting firm, has called the program “a pioneering effort in the ICT industry––and in the corporate social responsibility field as a whole.” “It’s all about increasing awareness on environmental and social issues at the factory level,” Prophet said.

In its own backyard, Hewlett-Packard is working to reduce its environmental footprint throughout the product lifecycle, Prophet said. Every day, HP delivers 1.3 million inkjet cartridges, more than 100,000 printers, 75,000 personal systems, and 3,500 servers. That translates to 1.4 megatons of carbon emissions annually, and tons upon tons of packaging and product that ultimately reside in landfill.

Partnering with the World Wildlife Fund, HP has committed to cutting its own emissions 20 percent by the year 2012. To accomplish this, Prophet said, design, manufacturing, logistics, and recycling initiatives are under way. For example, the company is moving from air to sea transport wherever possible to lower carbon emissions, and reducing the weight and volume of its products and shipping containers to reduce fuel use. Moreover, because less electrical usage also means lower emissions, HP computers now meet U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Energy Star standards of 80 percent energy efficiency. The new C-class servers consume two-thirds less energy than the previous generation. A dynamic “smart cooling” technology for data centers is further reducing power consumption for customers.

HP is also eliminating garbage from the waste stream by transitioning packaging from polystyrene foam to more streamlined, molded cartons made of recycled paper. Since 1989, Prophet said, HP also has run an extensive recycling program that handles consumers’ old products––from HP and beyond. With 4 million pounds of printers, scanners, computers, keyboards, and more being broken down, shredded, and resold as raw plastic, aluminum, and steel each month, he said, the company is moving toward its goal of recycling 1 billion pounds by the end of 2007.

Such efforts create triple-win situations for the environment, the company, and consumers, Prophet said. Smarter data-center cooling technology helps customers lower their electrical bills by 25 to 40 percent. Less bulky shipping means reduced freight costs for HP. Better environmental performance leads to more sales from globally conscious customers.

“For us, corporate social responsibility is a point of competitive differentiation,” Prophet said. “It’s really a business imperative. Things that are right for the environment are proving right for the bottom line of our company and our clients.”

The Global Supply Chain Management Forum is a leading research institute in partnership with industry practitioners, the Stanford School of Engineering, and the Stanford Graduate School of Business .Credit for above report due to Stanford Schools USA.