Dell’s commitment to be the Greenest Technology Company on the Planet continues to make great progress. This quarter, TBR announced that Dell topped its first-ever Corporate Sustainability Index Benchmark Report for 2009, which measures the environmental initiatives of 40 companies in the computer hardware, software, professional services and network and telecommunications sectors. In addition, GreenFactor ranked Dell the #1 green technology brand where more than 3,500 enterprise IT decision makers were surveyed on their perception of 26 enterprise technology brands. Both rankings provide some real world support for our efforts toward integrating environmental sustainability throughout our operations and products.
Beginning in July, we will also begin providing more transparency into Dell’s environmental metrics and for the first time will publish a list of our Tier One suppliers in this year’s Corporate Responsibility report.
Over the past year, we have participated in and held several stakeholder engagement meetings. The first was the Electronics Goes Green Conference in Europe. Next, there were a series of conference calls facilitated by CERES, which is a national network of investors, environmental organizations and other public interest groups working with companies and investors to address sustainability challenges such as global climate change. The calls were dedicated to specific topics around our environmental strategy, Enviro 2.0. And lastly, a large group stakeholder meeting was held here in Round Rock where all previous attendees were invited onsite to present their views directly to Michael Dell. From all of these meetings, we learned from our stakeholders that they wanted to have a broader and clearer understanding of our Enviro 2.0 strategy. They also told us to strengthen our commitment by publishing environmental metrics and providing more information regarding our supply chain.
In support of this feedback, we have since decided to publish the following metrics in the online version of our upcoming Corporate Responsibility report due out in July. We are still in the process of deciding actual targets and will update this information online.
· Resources: Total Water, Total Paper, Percent FSC Paper
· Recycle & Reuse: Total Mfg Non-hazardous Waste, Percent Recycled and Percent Reused
· Buildings: LEED Score New Space
· Future Consideration: Hazardous Waste; Hazardous Waste Reduction; DELL Total Non-hazardous Waste, Percent Recycled and Percent Reused
The meetings we held with stakeholders at these events gave us an opportunity to really listen to what they needed to assess our commitment to the environment. In some places we were in agreement, while in other areas we openly discussed the business challenges we face and sometimes agreed to disagree. What was so inspiring was the fact that we all left the meetings with a better understanding of each other.
We believe our decision to publish metrics that strengthen the five pillars of our Enviro 2.0 strategy makes sense to stakeholders, provides them with more confidence in our strategy, and increases their visibility to track our progress.
As always, we invite your feedback.
Tod Arbogast
Director, Dell Sustainable Business