Breaking Down Dell’s CSR Report

“CSR for Dummies” is an Earth911.com series highlighting the different pledges and commitments made by companies in regards to product stewardship and recycling. Companies and services featured do not pay for placement and are not endorsed by Earth911.com.

Dell’s CSR report is a fascinating document. It looks at the entire business from the perspective of sustainability. This examination leads into four main areas of emphasis:

• Employee engagement
• Community involvement
• Corporate accountability
• Environmental responsibility

So what does this mean? Here’s a cool example:

Dell ships servers. Many companies buy more than one server at a time. Instead of shipping them all in separate boxes, as many companies still do, Dell has something called the “Dell Server Multi-Pack.” The multi-pack can reduce the use of cardboard by 50 percent and save 1,951 tons of cardboard, 783 tons of wood pallets, 316 tons of paper, 148 tons of foam and 19 tons of plastic. This adds up to 41,000 trees.

Here’s a few other areas where Dell aims to keep the environment in mind:

Environmental Responsibility

1. Dell pledged to make its operations carbon neutral beginning in 2008, and its global headquarters campus in Round Rock, Texas is now powered by 100 percent green energy sources.
2. In product design, Dell takes a precautionary approach to materials selection and looks to both reduce product packaging and use recyclable packaging solutions. This not only saves resources, but less packaging allows more shipments to fit on trucks and conserves fuel in shipping.
3. Last but not least, Dell is making energy-efficient products that help reduce the associated climate impact of those products. According to Dell’s calculations, this has also saved customers $2.4 billion in energy costs.

Employee Engagement

By launching ReGeneration.org, a global meeting place that enables people to learn about going “green,” share ideas and protect the environment, Dell created a space for people to connect over a shared cause. Regeneration.org brings together experts, customers, stakeholders and others to foster meaningful dialogue on the environment—dialogue that will lead to action and results.

Community Involvement

1. Dell thinks that recycling a computer should be as simple for the consumer as purchasing one, so the company has a global take-back policy on all its products.
2. It is the only electronics industry company that offers free global recycling for all of its consumer products, irrespective of product purchase. Dell also recycles any other manufacturer’s consumer product if it is being replaced by a Dell product.
3. For business customers, the process is more complicated, but includes data destruction and secure responsible disposition.

Room for Improvement

Most important, this report is full of numbers. Dell is actually measuring its savings, and admitting where it has further to go:

• Global emissions increased in 2007, as did electricity use as Dell expanded
• Global electricity use increased by 3.6 percent over fiscal year 2007
• On the other hand, during fiscal year 2008, Dell nearly doubled the amount of renewable energy purchased from utility providers in North America, to 22.9 million kWh
• A total of 273 metric tons of landfill waste was diverted to a waste-to-energy project on a trial basis during fiscal year 2008.

Overall, Dell says it achieved just over 95 percent recycling and reuse in fiscal year 2008—the company has a goal of hitting 99 percent by 2012.

You can find non-takeback recycling solutions for any electronic device using Earth911.