ECO-BRIEF
The Environmental Product Life Cycle:
Environmentally Friendly Manufacturing
Sponsored by: HP
Matthew Eastwood
March 2007
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
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Since its founding in the 1930s, HP has recognized the importance of being a
responsible member of its community, and this vision remains in place today for the
company as well as its employees, customers, and partners across the globe. HP
recognizes that part of this vision is building and bringing to market environmentally
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friendly products, with a key component being environmentally friendly manufacturing.
HP addresses this vision through its global citizenship program, in which it works with
suppliers and partners around the globe to introduce environmentally responsible
manufacturing processes. For a graphical depiction of the role of manufacturing in the
IT product life cycle, see Figure 1.
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FIGURE 1
Global Headquarters: 5 Speen Street Framingham, MA 01701 USA
HP Approach to Reducing Environmental Impacts and Engaging
Stakeholders Across the Product Life Cycle
Source, IDC, 2007 adapted from HP
BACKGROUND
Successfully implementing a global citizenship program is not easy, particularly in an
industry that changes as fast as the IT infrastructure marketplace. New customer
requirements are constantly emerging that can have a significant impact on product
design, manufacturing, and distribution. It is critical for suppliers to balance
environmental design and manufacturing goals with other customer requirements
such as product quality, reliability, and price. This eco-brief examines HP's approach
to environmentally benign manufacturing today and how it implements its views of
social responsibility through the HP Supplier Code of Conduct.
HP Approach
Environmentally Benign Manufacturing
Environmentally benign manufacturing encompasses the technologies, operational
practices, and manufacturing strategies necessary to ensure sustainable production.
Its goal is to introduce benign materials into products while reducing the amount of
waste through remanufacturing, reuse, and recycling. This approach is particularly
important for IT products because of their relatively short life spans and their
expensive and complex manufacturing processes. Additionally, the types of raw
materials incorporated into IT products such as monitors, disk drives, circuit boards,
printers, and complete computer systems pose particular challenges from an
environmental perspective. For example, incorporating something as seemingly
simple as lead-free solder requires significant increases in temperatures during the
manufacturing process, which can negatively impact componentry and complicate
recycling initiatives.
In 1992 HP created Design for Environment (DfE) guidelines to guide the
environmental performance of manufacturing processes of partners throughout its
supply chain. Today, HP continues to work with partners and competitors alike to
ensure that alternative technologies are fully evaluated when determining trade-offs
between product functionality, reliability, safety, cost, and environmental impact.
Social Responsibility
Being an effective and responsible global citizen requires not only that an
organization make a commitment to effective corporate governance and business
ethics but also that it put the commitment into daily practice. For HP, social
responsibility translates to a focus on three key areas:
! Reducing the environmental impact of its products. HP aims to reduce the
environmental impact of its products by placing environmental considerations at
the forefront of all product and manufacturing decisions. By minimizing the
impact of raw materials used in its products, reducing energy requirements, and
incorporating recycling considerations into product design, HP has significantly
increased its product reuse and recycling levels year over year.
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! Transferring principles to its worldwide supply chain. The sheer size of HP's
supply chain 鈥? one of the largest in the IT industry today 鈥? enables the
company to broadly extend its social and environmental standards. Through its
Supply Chain Social and Environmental Responsibility (SER) Policy, HP
encourages its top 600 suppliers to develop internal management capability and
build continuous improvement into their manufacturing facilities.
! Increasing user access to technology. Finally, HP continues to work to reduce
the global digital divide in which only 15% of the world population has access to
personal computers and the Internet. HP believes this is an important
consideration in addressing social and economic inequality in both underserved
communities and developing countries.
Supplier Code of Conduct
Growth in manufacturing outsourcing, coupled with an increasingly global supply
chain, underscores the importance of working collaboratively to further the goals of
social responsibility. HP teamed up with a number of other IT suppliers to develop
standards focusing on labor and employment, ethics, environmental protection, and
health and safety practices to apply to suppliers throughout the global supply chain.
For example, HP's Supplier Code of Conduct includes universal bans on child labor,
employment discrimination, and disciplinary wage deductions, which in many cases
far exceed the legal requirements in the supplier's home country. HP actively leads
and participates in the Electronic Industry Code of Conduct (EICC) and the Global
e-Sustainability Initiative (GeSI) to eliminate redundant and inefficient assessments,
audits, and reporting for common suppliers.
HP continues to evolve its corporate social responsibility program, drawing on its own
manufacturing expertise to train its business partners as well as the experience of
industries that were on the pioneering edge of socially responsible manufacturing
such as apparel and agriculture. The resulting program now includes virtually all
members of the HP global supply chain. HP performs regular supplier audits to
ensure compliance, with HP sourcing managers scoring suppliers based on social
responsibility, technology, delivery and responsiveness, pricing, and quality. The goal
of the program is to align the business goals of HP and its suppliers while overcoming
potential cultural barriers and ensuring success for the supplier and its employees.
IDC Analysis
For 15 years, HP's DfE program has pursued three priorities: energy efficiency,
materials innovation, and design for recyclability. Although many companies are
recognizing the benefits their brands receive from effective eco-responsibility
programs, the primary goal for most organizations 鈥? HP included 鈥? is satisfying
customer demand for these programs. The most important buying criteria for
consumers and businesses alike with regard to IT products are still price,
performance, and quality. However, it is clear that environmental awareness is on the
rise across the globe, from Europe to Asia to the Americas. As a result, customers
are beginning to consider global citizenship issues 鈥? in particular eco-labels and
recycling programs 鈥? when selecting IT products. Such awareness is particularly
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evident among public sector customers, but IDC is beginning to see consumers and
businesses both in Europe and in Asia pay attention to this issue. Further, IDC
believes that a strong supplier code of conduct is an important extension of the IT
brand and will be important to maintaining a loyal customer base in the future.
CONCLUSION
While the effort to reduce the environmental impact of IT products extends to all
stages of the product life cycle, the manufacturing phase is of particular importance.
Consumers and business customers alike are becoming far more aware of global
citizenship issues to the point where basic offerings such as eco-labels and support
for recycling programs are becoming fundamental requirements for suppliers looking
to participate in today's IT marketplace. In response, HP is working closely with
supply chain partners around the world to facilitate a supplier code of conduct that
addresses environmentally friendly manufacturing processes and creates positive
results for customers, partners, employees, and HP.
HP Products and the Environment Document
Series
This eco-brief is part of a series of IDC documents commissioned by HP to discuss its
environmentally aware policies and practices. This series includes a core white paper,
HP Products Built to Protect the Environment, as well as standalone eco-briefs
focusing on specific product areas: product design, manufacturing, power and
cooling, and product end of life.
Copyright Notice
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Copyright 2007 IDC. Reproduction without written permission is completely forbidden.
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