HP is stepping up its work on its products’ environmental sustainability
George Brasher, UK and Ireland managing director at HP, said that although the current situation was difficult, the planet was at a critical point.
“If you look at the environment, you are starting to see the impact of climate change and global warming”, he said, adding that the Black Lives Matter movement had also shown a spotlight on the ongoing inequalities in society and that the pandemic had underlined that certain groups had been the hardest hit by the virus. “Faced with these challenges, what we believe as HP is that we have to go back to our core principles to figure out how we go forward.”
The firm publishes its sustainability report every June. So far, HP has recycled more than 4.69 billion plastic bottles and removed 1,000 tonnes of packaging that was difficult to recycle. It has also kept 875 million printer cartridges out of landfill since it started working with partners in 1991 on its recycling scheme.
The report also includes some future targets, which include the aim of 30 percent post-consumer plastic in PCs and printers by 2025. The aim is to reduce by 75 percent the use of single-use plastic packaging by the same date. It is also committed to reducing its carbon footprint and cutting the emissions produced in the manufacturing of its products by 30 percent.
“If you go back to the previous century, businesses saw sustainability as a ‘nice to have’, typically an extra bullet point at the end of a business plan. What we have seen is that company leaders have determined that it is not only a moral imperative, but a business imperative”, he said.
Brasher said HP has seen this translate into customer demand, with $1.69 billion of revenue coming through where sustainability was a factor, a 69 percent increase over last year.
