Business

How HP plans to Go Beyond its Sustainable Impact efforts

James McCall, HP’s Chief Sustainability Officer on how this creative expression is also a call to action to foster meaningful and lasting change.

June 27, 2023

As our latest Sustainability Impact Report shows, HP has made progress that we are proud of in combating climate change, safeguarding human rights, and increasing access to life-improving technology. Yet even with our contributions and the efforts of countless others, the world remains precariously out of balance.

The latest United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) provides an important reminder: “Climate change is a threat to human well-being and planetary health. There is a rapidly closing window of opportunity to secure a liveable and sustainable future for all.”

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If there’s anything we’ve learned since the start of this decade, it’s that our planet and people are wholly intertwined. We must also strive for greater social justice, more gender and racial equality, and close the vast digital divide. Then we must go a step further, helping the planet and its inhabitants not just to survive but also to thrive.

James McCall, chief sustainability officer at HP.

Rising to the challenge

This is where HP can be at its most impactful. When it comes to making the world a better place, we’re not satisfied with just reducing our carbon footprint or building more circular products. That’s a step in the right direction. Still, our overarching drive is to better society, whether it means more trees, more educational opportunities, or more people given a chance to use their skills and talents fully.

This drive has been in our DNA since Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard founded the company in 1939, and we’re doubling down as the world needs more support than ever before.

Go Beyond is a creative expression that encapsulates the ethos for our collective Sustainable Impact efforts. It aims to make it easier for customers to make more conscious purchase decisions. For instance, choosing products from a company that enables worker wellbeing, supports opportunity for advancement, elevates worker voices, and promotes workers’ agency regarding their choices and careers. Selecting technology that is empowering creatives to produce culturally relevant books to help children learn to read in their mother tongue. Or opting for products made using recycled materials — including recycled plastic water bottles that are diverted from reaching our ocean.

Doing more than what is expected

Go Beyond is also a rallying cry for everyone at HP to push beyond short-term impact to foster positive, lasting change through our innovations and initiatives. It starts with doing the right thing, in reducing our own environmental footprint.

In 2020, we hit our goal of sourcing only third-party certified sustainable fiber for all HP brand paper and paper-based product packaging for PCs, displays, supplies, and home and office printers. We are now going beyond that, aiming to counteract the impact on forests of all paper — not just HP paper — used in our products and print services by 2030.

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Protecting and restoring forestland is critical for the environment. And it must be done hand-in-hand with the inhabitants of those areas to ensure long-term improvements by promoting sustainable livelihoods and equitable benefits for Indigenous communities. We’ve partnered with sustainability and environmental-focused organizations such as World Wildlife Fund (WWF), Conservation International, and the Arbor Day Foundation to achieve these objectives.

We know solving planet-size problems will not come from a single act of good, or a single company — instead it requires a true culture change. We’re seeing our customers and business partners around the world stepping forward, setting their own aggressive sustainable impact goals and purchasing products that are more responsibly sourced, have a lower carbon footprint, or that have a positive impact within communities. In fact, a 2022 report by Enterprise Strategy Group that surveyed 400 IT professionals at organizations in North America, the United Kingdom, Singapore, Australia, and New Zealand found that 85% of enterprise professional respondents have screened out potential suppliers or products based on environmental, social, or governance-related concerns at least once.

As HP works to provide our customers with products and solutions that align with their values and business missions, we hope to inspire millions of others inside and outside HP to participate in this journey — to go beyond what is expected and to do more. Sustainability is a team sport, and to truly succeed, all our contributions are needed.

Positioning future generations to go beyond

From our earliest days, environmental sustainability and social impact have been part of how HP has operated. The company’s founders truly wanted to make the world a better place. In fact, HP’s first corporate objectives included “good citizenship — making contributions to the community (and) the environment in which we operate.”

The more we embrace Bill and Dave’s philosophies — and empower others to succeed — the more we position ourselves for sustainable success. If we all go beyond, we will create unlimited opportunities for future generations to replicate the spirit and generosity of these two visionaries.

Our choices now will empower the innovators and leaders of tomorrow so they can ensure that the planet, and its people, continue to thrive.