Today marks my first day as Chief Sustainability and Social Impact Officer at HP, and the day we release our 18th annual Sustainable Impact Report and inaugural Human Rights Progress Report. At this milestone moment, I find myself thinking a lot about accountability and action. In a year that has tested our values, resolve, leadership, and resilience, it’s more essential than ever that companies are transparent with their stakeholders and truly own their impact and influence.
The COVID-19 pandemic illustrates how inextricably linked people, communities, and the planet are—proving that there are no real borders to global challenges. The profound disruption to employment and education from the pandemic lockdown further lays bare the inequalities that plague our society and divides those who have and those who have not. The killing of Rayshard Brooks, George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and far too many others, serve as tragic reminders of how much progress must still be made toward treating everyone with the fairness, dignity, and humanity they deserve.
These challenging times highlight the need for—and the powerful effect of—collective action, creative problem solving, and purpose-led businesses that can direct their resources and innovation capability for the greater good. Our founders Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard instilled in the company a belief that businesses should focus on more than just profits; they must also be strong corporate citizens. And today, our President and CEO, Enrique Lores, calls upon companies like HP to be beacons of progress. We know we must work across our industry and the private sector, and together with our employees, partners, and customers, to tackle the critical challenges that we face. And we understand that to truly move forward we must authentically take stock of where we are compared to where we said we would be, and, more importantly, compared to the future to which we aspire.
The 2019 HP Sustainable Impact Report and Human Rights Progress Report reflect a moment in time. These reports are tools of transparency that are expected by our employees, customers, and investors—and demanded of ourselves. This is a moment to evaluate our commitments and performance, and to use data and insights to drive more effective progress toward achieving our vision. Knowledge provides a springboard for action.
Respecting Human Rights Means All Humans, All Rights
Since we launched the first HP Sustainable Impact Report in 2002, we have annually reported on our human rights programs and impact. This year, we take that further with the release of our inaugural Human Rights Progress Report. HP respects all human rights and has been recognized as a leader in the electronics industry by KnowTheChain, the Corporate Human Rights Benchmark, and Ethisphere’s World’s Most Ethical Companies. We integrate policies into our day-to-day business practices—inclusive of our supply chain, operations, and products—that cover worker health and safety, inclusive and fair employment, and a strong stance and prohibition against trafficking in persons.
HP has long considered diversity and inclusion a business imperative and we have steadily increased our hiring from underrepresented groups, including women, U.S. ethnicities, veterans, and persons with disabilities. Earlier this year, HP re-committed to the CEO Action for Diversity and Inclusion, the largest CEO-driven business commitment to advance diversity and inclusion in the workplace. And just this month, the HP Foundation pledged $500,000 to social justice organizations to confront and combat systemic racism and inequality in society.
Yet there is much more work to be done to accelerate diversity at all levels of our company. Against a backdrop of eliminating systemic racial injustice across the U.S. and the world, transparency, dialogue, and most importantly, action, are essential.
Today, HP announced a new goal to double the number of Black and African American executives inside the company by 2025. And we are partnering with Girl Rising to launch My Story: The 2020 Storytelling Challenge to share inspiring examples of young leaders fighting for human rights, racial justice, gender equity and the advancement of education for girls. Girl Rising is accepting narrative, video, digital image, or audio submissions that tell stories of the leadership, courage and creativity that young people are demonstrating to build a better future. The challenge begins today and remains open until September 1. Fifteen Showcase Stories will be chosen by a panel of judges to be included in the Girl Rising International Day of the Girl Celebration in October 2020.
Leaning in to Eliminate Single-use Plastic
2019 was an important year of progress toward our vision to transform HP’s entire business to advance a more efficient, circular, and low-carbon economy. Honoring our commitment to increase post-consumer recycled content in our products to 30 percent by 2025, we achieved more than 9 percent through 2019. We report that we sourced over 1 million pounds of ocean-bound plastic to make HP products through 2019, but we’re not stopping there—in fact, today we announced we have now sourced 1.7 million pounds. That’s more than 60 million plastic bottles diverted before reaching our oceans. In our quest to eliminate plastic wherever we can, we announced a new goal to eliminate 75 percent of single-use plastic packaging by 2025 compared with 2018. As part of this commitment, we’re focusing on converting plastic foam cushioning material to 100 percent recycled molded fiber.
We have 111 Gold and 268 Silver EPEAT-registered products, more than any other company in the IT industry, giving HP the world’s most sustainable PC portfolio. Life cycle assessments (LCAs) of three service-based models—HP Device as a Service , HP Managed Print Services, and HP Instant Ink—demonstrate that service-based solutions outperformed transactional models in all LCA environmental impact categories. And furthering our commitment to protect and restore global forests, we expanded the Sustainable Forests Collaborative with the addition of the Arbor Day Foundation, Chenming Paper, Domtar, and New Leaf.
HP was the first global IT company to disclose its full carbon footprint eight years ago, and it’s a practice we continue annually. Collecting and reporting helps us identify where we are on track as well as exceeded our own expectations, such as achieving an 18 percent decrease in product use GHG emissions intensity (meaning emissions across a product’s anticipated lifetime) toward our goal of a 30 percent reduction by 2025, and achieving a goal six years early to reduce potable water consumption in global operations by 15 percent.
More importantly, reporting helps inform where we must sharpen our focus and make course corrections. In 2019, for example, positive gains in product efficiency reduced our product use phase emissions by 3 percent, but our business growth and a shift in our components mix contributed to a 12 percent increase in product manufacturing emissions. This is a challenge that we—like many of our customers—face as we strive to decouple growth from consumption, and it’s one HP is fully committed to solving.
The events of 2020 challenge us to rethink nearly every aspect of how we live, work, and grow as a society. Taking a pause to recognize where we are and identifying where we need to improve and accelerate to achieve the future to which we aspire, is an important step on our Sustainable Impact journey. I couldn’t be more excited to lead this next chapter as we accelerate our actions to deliver on our promise to make life better for everyone, everywhere. I invite you to join us in this moment. You can learn more and see the full reports at www.hp.com/sustainableimpact.