It all started as a worthy cause before becoming a fashionable advocacy. Now "environment responsibility has become part of every company's mission," states Hewlett-Packard Philippines Corp. (HP) in a prepared statement.

It is this evolution that made HP put in place “its comprehensive Design for the Environment Strategy that touches upon every aspect of its business, encompassing its products and services, development and scientific research, supply chains and operations throughout the world.”

All in the push to “help today’s businesses adapt, stay in business,” HP stresses.

The green moves, of course, are important.

David Tan, managing director and general manager for HP’s technology solutions group in the Philippines, cites HP-collected data that shows how “80% of our customers evaluate the environmental practices (of the company) as part of purchasing, (with) 55% giving preferred status to vendors who address environmental issues,” he says. This is understandable, since, again based on the same data collection, “70% of companies underestimate their costs of disposing electronics (even while) information technology (IT) power spending is growing four times faster than IT equipment spending.”

“In a world with limited resources, we cannot continue to consume energy at our current rates,” Tan says. “So at HP, we (continuously work) toward sustainable computing.”

Big Moves

HP’s green initiatives are, generally speaking, segregated into three “designs” for the energy and/or climate, product reuse and recycling, and supply chain responsibility. All three are, nonetheless, intertwined, so that HP’s green efforts affect all, not only select groups, of its stakeholders.

“For more than 25 years, the environment has played a key role in everything we do at HP. Yet, our concern for the earth’s fragile ecosystem goes back to the early days of HP. Founders Dave Hewlett and Bill Packard were always concerned about HP’s impact on the communities where we operate, and the world at large. Now as then, we’re committed to providing you with inventive, high quality products and services that are environmentally sound and to conduct our operations in an environmentally responsible manner. That commitment continues to comprise guiding principles that are deeply ingrained in our values. It is from this history and these values that HP has become a leader in delivery of environmentally sustainable solutions for your business,” HP states. “HP meets this commitment with a comprehensive environmental, health, and safety policy, strict environmental management of our operations, and worldwide environmental programs and services. We make responsible choices, making it easier for you to do the same. Together, and by inspiring others in these and other everyday actions, we can make all the difference in the world.”

Much of the focus is on cutting energy use, whether by HP in its operations, or in the use of HP products – understandably so, too, since upload “data centers and computer closets consume more than 1% of the world’s electricity, (just as) HP scientists estimate business technology to consume 415 million tons of coal per year with 864 million tons of CO2 greenhouse emissions. It’s no surprise that enterprises around the world face a growing range of environmental regulations — and a growing realization that the status quo has to change,” HP adds. “Here’s the new reality: If we all want to be in business in the future, we have to change the way we use power and reduce our impact on the environment. Sustainable computing is a substantial part of the answer.” As it is, through energy efficiency initiatives, “we reduced absolute energy use from operations by 1% in 2006; that equals savings of approximately 35 million kilo watt hour, and reduction of our carbon footprint by 18,000 tons of greenhouse gases,” HP states. In the long run, HP is looking at reducing the combined energy consumption of HP operations and products 20% below 2005 levels by 2010. “We’re well on the way and we are ready to help you reduce your computing energy
costs, reduce your technology carbon footprint, and make the most of your existing ICT investment.”

It goes without saying, nonetheless, that “much of the greening focus is in making of HP products more self-sustainable,” so that, as Tan puts it, HP’s products “are built to meet all essential computing needs with practical features.”

All for Effeciency

HP’s products that are green are actually as diverse as they are numerous. For data centers, which the company has been “committed to servicing since the early 1990s, HP research and development teams continue to solve energy problems using sophisticated modeling to better provision cooling resources, allocate computing workloads, and reclaim power capacity in constrained data centers.” It is with these goals that HP came up with the HP Energy Efficiency Design and Analysis Services, as a way “to address data center energy challenges, including energy efficiency analysis (to provide scenarios and cost benefits, along with detailed plans for energy-efficiency improvements, investment payback and facility reliability); and energy efficiency design (to provide designs for new buildings or retro-commissioning existing facilities for compliance with worldwide environmentally accredited standards, such as Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design or LEED, and the Building Research Establishment’s Environmental Assessment Method or BREEAM).”

Data centers are also offered such products as the HP ProLiant BL460c G5 Server Blade, that “has been completely redesigned to maximize energy efficiency and optimized for power-constrained environments, (using) 44 fewer watts per blade, saving more than 700 watts per enclosure compared to its predecessor – up to a 25% energyefficiency improvement;” the HP Blade- System c7000 Enclosure (that) has been enhanced with a new HP 2400W High Efficiency Hot-Plug Power Supply (to) provide higher efficiency than existing power supply units (while also reducing) losses at low loads by placing half the power supply in standby;” and the HP Thermal Logic portfolio that “include power-capping server technologies and energy-efficiency services designed to reduce costs and extend the life of data centers (through reallocation of power and cooling resources in the data center by dynamically setting or ‘capping’ the power drawn by the servers, thereby eliminating the need for over provisioning by precisely identifying how much power is actually required to run each server and setting a limit based on that usage).”

“With these new solutions from HP, customers are able to drive down data center costs by reducing energy consumption and, at the same time, minimize environmental impact,” says Peter Gross, chief executive officer of EYP Mission Critical Facilities, an HP company. “HP’s Green Business Technology initiative is built on decades of innovation and experience in data center design and deployment, resulting in solutions that empower CIOs to turn energy efficiency into business benefits that impact the bottom line.”

All in all, the goal, for the company, is to introduce “system practices and product design (as) key drivers to achieving data center energy and cost savings, as well as business growth.”

Computing is Personal

And then there is the 2008 HP business notebook personal computer (PC) line that “has qualified for high energy efficiency, based on ENERGY STAR (energy efficiency rating of the US Environmental Protection Agency) requirements.” This is because of the use of, among others, the HP Illumi-Lite displays, which are “highly efficient backlit LED, boasting battery run time by upwards of 90 minutes;” recyclable and/or recoverable materials (90% of an HP business notebook PC); and use of the Solid State Drives (SSD) options that are “quieter, cooler, and use 50% less power than HDD but yield 5% longer run times.”

No wonder that HP’s business desktops were the first to meet ENERGY STAR 4.0 requirements only one of the company’s many citations for turning green, which now include, among others, inclusion in the Top 10 Fortune Green Giants 2007, honourable mention in SEMARNAT Ecological Merit Award, Demand Response Award in California Flex Your Power Program, Recycling Council of Ontario Platinum Waste Minimization Award, PRMA Award for Environmental Performance, 2006 and 2007 Environmental Printing Award from PrintAction, and the Recycler of the Year from the Washington State Recycling Association.

The company isn’t resting on its laurels just yet, though, as it continues to “aim to reduce our combined product and operations energy use and associated greenhouse gas emissions by 25% by 2010, (and) recover two billion pounds of computing and printing equipment (also) by 2010,” Tan says. And the “focus is not on how much this will cost (HP), but on how much it will benefit society.”

After all, quoting Mark Hurd, HP chairman and CEO, “environmental responsibility is good business. We’ve reached the tipping point where the price and performance of IT are no longer compromised by being green, but are now enhanced by it,” Tan ends.