Skip to main content

Going Green is Good for Dell and the Environment

David Lear, executive director of corporate sustainability at Dell, courtesy photo
David Lear, executive director of corporate sustainability at Dell, courtesy photo
It turns out going green is good for Dell and not just in a feel good way.
The company not only has greatly reduced its impact on the environment through recycling and cutting carbon emissions in the last decade, but it has generated profits in the process.
Actor and Filmmaker Adrian Grenier, who serves as Dell’s first Social Good Advocate, said he only agreed to do the job if Dell pledged to do real work with measurable results.
“But also, to be realistic, we’re all business people, as an entrepreneur myself, we don’t want to be Pollyanna about it,” Grenier said. “We want to make sure that we are making money as well as doing good.”
Adrian Grenier, photo courtesy of Dell
Adrian Grenier, photo courtesy of Dell
Grenier spoke Wednesday morning with Dell Chief Marketing Officer Karen Quintos during the keynote presentation at Dell World 2015 at the Austin Convention Center.
Dell has taken 30 million plus pounds of packaging out of the waste stream and also saved more than $50 million in the process, Grenier said.
“To me that’s a win-win not only for the bottom line but also creating human value as well,” he said.
In fact, Dell has a list of 21 goals focused on improvements for the environment, communities and people by 2020, said David Lear, executive director of corporate sustainability at Dell. He sat down for an interview with Silicon Hills News during Dell World to talk about the company’s focus on reducing its impact on the environment.
Last Monday, Lear was at the White House in Washington, D.C. to sign the American Business Act on Climate Pledge. Dell and 80 other companies, including its acquisition target: EMC Corp., have signed the pledge to take action on climate change.
The companies have agreed to reduce emissions by as much as 50 percent, reduce water usage by as much as 80 percent, achieve zero waste-to-landfill, purchase 100 percent renewable energy and pursue zero net deforestation in supply chains.
Those initiatives were already underway at Dell, Lear said. In fact, Dell’s headquarters in Round Rock operates on 100 percent renewable energy. And throughout its company, Dell plans to meet 50 percent of its energy needs through alternative energy sources by 2020. Dell has already hit the 40 percent mark, Lear said.
But Dell wasn’t always as focused on being green as it is now.
In 2003, environmental groups targeted Dell at its annual shareholder meeting in Austin and at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas for its lack of recycling efforts. But instead of ignoring their complaints, Dell invited them to its company headquarters to talk about how it could change, Lear said. Michael Dell had meetings with the environmental activists and took many of their suggestions to heart and changed the company’s business practices as a result. Today, even as a private company, Michael Dell still regularly meets with environmental groups and activists to learn about ways to improve operations, Lear said.
Dell is now the world’s largest technology recycler with programs in 78 countries. The company is more than 71 percent of the way to its goal of recovering two billion pounds of used electronics by 2020.
“I think one of the biggest things we did is instead of shying away from some of the interest groups we invited them in,” Lear said. “That’s really been our theme for a long time.”
The environmental groups are generally a bellwether of the future, Lear said.
“So much of what these interest groups have to say is how we plan our future,” he said.
For example, last year, Dell introduced closed loop recycling. It partnered with Underwriters Lab to get certification on 34 products globally made from recycled plastics. So far, the company has collected 4.2 million pounds of plastics that it has recycled back into new Dell products.
A lot of recycling innovation has come from the way Dell packages its computers, Lear said. The company also partners with startup companies to find innovative solutions to packaging problems.
“Dell is willing to try new things and experiment a little bit to test out a new product,” Lear said. “We partner with small entrepreneurs to prove out there is an industry there for them.”
Dell is now doing a pilot program with Newlight Technologies’ AirCarbon to make plastic bags for its notebook computers made from carbon-captured methane gas-based plastics. The startup essentially turns air pollution into plastics.
“Their waste material could become a primary material for a lot of our plastics,” Lear said.
Wheat straw, which is treated, combined with recycled fibers and turned into boxes for Dell, courtesy photo.
Wheat straw, which is treated, combined with recycled fibers and turned into boxes for Dell, courtesy photo.
Dell is also using wheat straw in many of its cardboard boxes for notebooks being shipped from China. The wheat straw is waste material resulting from the harvesting of wheat. In the past, Chinese farmers burned the straw to get rid of it. Now, instead, Dell picks it up and takes it to a plant for processing. The waste is broken down, treated and mixed with other recycled fibers to create new cardboard boxes. The practice not only relies on recycled materials, but also saves tons of carbon emissions from being emitted into China’s air annually from burning the wheat straw, Lear said.
Wheat straw packaging has reduced our environmental impact, created jobs and it’s cheaper than cardboard, Lear said. Dell has also replaced the foam inserts in its packages with bamboo and mushroom-based products.
Dell demonstrates that social good and sustainability can be profitable practices for any business, Lear said.
“Dell has a passion for making a difference and leaving a legacy,” Lear said.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Shatterproof screens to protect smartphones

Polymer scientists at the University of Akron in Ohio have developed a transparent electrode that could change the face of smartphones, literally, by making their displays shatterproof. In a recently published paper, researchers show how a transparent layer of nanowire-based electrodes on a polymer surface could be extraordinarily tough and flexible, withstanding repeated scotch tape peeling and bending tests. This could revolutionise and replace conventional touchscreens, according to Yu Zhu, UA assistant professor of polymer science. Currently used coatings made of indium tin oxide (ITO) are more brittle, most likely to shatter, and increasingly costly to manufacture. “These two pronounced factors drive the need to substitute ITO with a cost-effective and flexible conductive transparent film,” Zhu says, adding that the new film provides the same degree of transparency as ITO, yet offers greater conductivity. The novel film retains its shape and functionality after tests i...

Get 56GB of free cloud storage in one folder!

Bring Your Box, Dropbox, Google Drive, & OneDrive All Together In One Folder With odrive! Dropbox gives you up to 16GB free.  Google Drive & Gmail give you 15GB. OneDrive gives you 15GB. Box gives you 10GB. odrive brings all your cloud storage apps together in one folder right on your desktop. Just link your Dropbox, Google Drive, Gmail, Box, and OneDrive accounts to odrive and instantly get all your files scattered everywhere in one place! You can even link multiple accounts from each app to get even more! 1. Install odrive. DOWNLOAD It's free! And available for Windows & Mac :) 3.Get all your stuff! 2. Link all your cloud storage accounts. Note:  This gives odrive permission to download your files for you. odrive doesn't store anything, we promise! OXYGEN CLOUD, INC., 1600 SEAPORT BLVD, REDWOOD CITY, CA, 94063, UNITED  ...

So, when will your device actually get Android Oreo?

Google officially just took the wraps off of Android Oreo, but there are still some questions left to be answered — most notably, precisely when each device will be getting the latest version of the mobile operating system. Due to Android’s openness and a variety of different factors on the manufacturing side, it’s not an easy question to answer, but we’ll break it down best we can. First the good news: If your device was enrolled in the Android Beta Program, you’ll be getting your hands on the final version of the software “soon,” according to Google. Exactly what that means remains to be seen, but rest assured that you’ll be one of of the first people outside of Google to take advantage of picture-in-picture, notification dots and the like. No big surprise, Google handsets will be the first non-beta phones to get the update. The Pixel, Nexus 5X and 6P are at the top of the list, alongside Pixel C tablet and ASUS’s Nexus Player set-top box, which will be receiving the upgrade i...

The Withings Go Is A Cheap Little Activity Tracker

Withings  has one more thing up its sleeve, a new activity tracker. This isn’t a new version of the  Pulse  or Activité. This is a brand new activity tracker. And the best part is that it only costs $69. The Withings Go uses an always-on E Ink display like the one on your Kindle or original Pebble. It’s very power efficient but it’s also a black and white display. But the good thing about this kind of display is that the Withings Go uses a button cell battery and the battery lasts 8 months. This new device tracks your steps, distance, running activity and swimming activity. You can also use it to track your sleep cycles. Compared to other entry-level activity trackers, you can do quite a lot. You don’t have to switch between activities — the device switches automatically. And of course, you can get your data in the Withings Health Mate app on iOS and Android. The Withings Go will be available in Q1 2016. Now the question is whether people want ...

Where does Blue Apron go after Amazon wraps up its Whole Foods deal?

Last week, Amazon said that its massive $13.7 billion deal to acquire Whole Foods is wrapping up on Monday — giving it access to one of the strongest food brands in the United States, as well as hundreds of grocery stores in metropolitan areas. That means it’s going to be easier and easier for people to get access to great ingredients, and there’s been a continued trickle of suggestions that Amazon will be gunning for a massive business that helped Blue Apron go public — a trickle that has since tempered Wall Street’s appetite for that business. All this raises a ton of questions as to what the future of Blue Apron is as Amazon looks primed to bulldoze into its territory in a very Amazon move. But as the specter of Amazon getting into meal-kit delivery looms, let’s review really quickly what Blue Apron has going for it: It has a strong brand in meal-kit delivery. The company wouldn’t have been able to go public, much less sustain unicorn status even as its stock continues to plumme...