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HP's greatest impact on the environment is through our products and
services. The design stage provides the opportunity to minimize those
impacts. Our policy is to design products and services that are
environmentally sound and safe throughout their life cycle (see Environmental,
Health and Safety Policy on page 34 of our FY05 report).
We established our Design for Environment (DfE) program in 1992. Our
DfE priorities are product
energy efficiency, materials
innovation and Design
for Recyclability to reduce the quantity and environmental impact of
the materials in our products. The DfE program also addresses packaging.
HP's Environmental Strategies Council coordinates the implementation of
our DfE strategy. This group includes representatives from each global
business unit and sales region, as well as from supply chain, operations
and other corporate functions. Our global network of product stewards
works with design and development teams to incorporate environmental
innovations into our products.
Customer demand increasingly influences environmental product design.
As a result, DfE innovation provides competitive advantage. Customers
increasingly care about environmental factors such as product energy use
and recyclability (see Customers
and global citizenship). Governments in many countries often set
demanding public procurement criteria.
Eco-labels help customers identify products that meet certain
environmental criteria. We conform to and certify products to many
eco-labels around the world (see detail about compliant products). This is essential to sell products in some
markets and it provides a competitive advantage in others.
Harmonizing product standards encourages innovation by avoiding local
regulatory barriers. Even when regulations introduce new objectives,
industry members may collaborate to determine how to best achieve them.
Harmonizing environmentally related product standards can also help
manufacturers maintain consistent levels of quality products and services.
In addition, harmonized product standards can facilitate making
informed environmentally responsible purchasing decisions. For example, HP
was instrumental in the multi-stakeholder process that developed the
environmental performance standard IEEE 1680, published by the Institute
of Electrical and Electronics Engineers in 2006. This standard integrates
a wide variety of existing regulations and standards, including U.S.
Energy Star® and the European Union Restriction of Hazardous Substances
(RoHS) and Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) Directives.
The IEEE standard, which was adopted as the basis for the EPEAT tool
for computers, specifies 23 required and 28 optional criteria across eight
areas of environmental impact covering all product life cycle stages. It
defines three levels of compliance and provides an evaluation tool for
buyers to assess the environmental performance of desktop and notebook
computers and displays.
HP is also active in various bodies that develop standards for the
electronics industry such as the International Electrotechnical Commission
(IEC) and Ecma International. For example, HP has supported the IT Eco
Declaration since its launch in 1996. We have issued more than 1,000
product IT Eco Declarations, participated in the Ecma working group that
made this an international standard in 2006, and led the project to
broaden the standard to include print supplies. See more information about Design
for Environment.
Part of HP's business strategy is to grow through acquisition. When we
acquire a company, we first ensure that current products meet applicable
regulatory requirements and then we start their transition to HP's more
demanding DfE standards. This transition may take several product
introduction cycles to complete. Until then, we do not include these
products in our product goals or progress reports. In 2006, HP acquired
Voodoo PC, a manufacturer of high performance and personalized gaming
computer systems, and in 2005, we acquired Scitex Vision, a manufacturer
of large format printers. We are currently working with both these
companies to transition their products to HP's environmental product
design requirements.
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