BIOS: Technology Means Business

Michael Dell has announced a global carbon-neutral initiative that plants trees for customers to offset the carbon impact of electricity required to power their systems.

The first of its kind programme, announced at the Consumer Electronics Show, underscores Dell’s commitment to continued broad environmental stewardship.

“The customer experience starts with receiving the best value and continues with the knowledge that we are working with our customers to protect the environment throughout the life of their system,” said Michael Dell, chairman of Dell. “Programmes like ‘Plant a Tree for Me’ and our global recycling efforts empower our customers to participate with us in making a difference. It is our hope that other companies in our industry will join us to improve the environment that we all share.”

Dell will be the first global technology company to offer customers the opportunity to offset the emissions associated with the electricity used to power their computers through its ‘Plant a Tree for Me’ programme. Dell is partnering with The Conservation Fund and the Carbonfund.org, non-profit organisations that will use the funds to plant trees in sustainably managed forests, absorbing carbon dioxide released in the atmosphere from generated electricity.

The company said that 100% of the donations received by the ‘Plant a Tree for Me’ programme will be used by partners to facilitate planting trees. A customer donation of $2 for a laptop and $6 for a desktop will go toward the planting of trees which will absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, offsetting the equivalent emissions resulting from the production of electricity used during the average three-year use of a computer. The programme is available now to Dell’s U.S. consumer customers making new computer purchases. It will be available to any U.S. consumer for any brand of computer in February and available to global consumers in April.

“Dell is taking significant and inspired leadership toward ecologically intelligent design by initiating the responsible return of its products and its Plant a Tree for Me programme. It’s a very exciting time; both programmes represent delightful strategies of hope for the clean and green future,” said William McDonough, author of “Cradle to Cradle” and an internationally recognised environmental expert.

“We applaud Dell’s leadership for its commitment to offset the carbon footprint of its computers,” said Larry Selzer, president of The Conservation Fund. “Climate change has emerged as one of the dominant environmental issues of our time, and Dell’s industry-leading efforts to address this challenge, and its invitation to its customers to join in this initiative, serve as a model for corporate environmental stewardship in the 21st century.”

Dell also launched a new Web site today, www.dell.com/earth, which highlights the breadth of Dell’s environmental responsibility programmes. The site contains information on Dell’s approach to environmental leadership, links to in-depth information on environmental programmes and policies found throughout dell.com. The site also contains an ‘energy counter’ that tracks the accumulated energy and carbon savings impact enabled by Energy Smart features on Dell products.

Dell completed a rollout of its global recycling policy in December and remains the only company in the industry to offer consumers free and convenient product recycling, worldwide irrespective of product purchase. Dell will continue to expand product reuse and recycling options for consumers and work with policy makers to promote individual producer responsibility in 2007. The company has a goal to recover 125 million kilograms (about 275 million pounds) of product from customers by 2009.

Dell works with a number of stakeholders to help set environmental policies, and will continue to work to meet the environmental requirements of customers around the globe. Dell shared the number one position when Greenpeace last year released its first Guide to Greener Electronics report. It ranks the environmental practices of the electronics industry, including product recycling and chemical use policies. Updated quarterly, the December 2006 Greenpeace report ranked Dell second, maintaining its position leading the computer industry.

Dell also made significant progress during 2006 against its goal to deliver customers the most energy-efficient products in the industry. Since announcing the strategy and customer energy resource calculators at www.dell.com/energy in September 2006, Dell has rolled Energy Smart settings across the latest models of its OptiPlex desktop line to enable up to 70% system power savings for the OptiPlex 745, introduced its ninth-generation PowerEdge server products using Intel Xeon 5100 series processors that consume up to 25% less power than previous generations, and introduced two PowerEdge products with Energy Smart settings.

Dell recently announced it had exceeded its five-year goal to use 50% recycled content by 2009. The company’s marketing publications now use an average of 50% recycled content paper - and in many publications up to 90%. The company estimates the increased recycled content paper is avoiding the use of nearly 35,000 tons of virgin fibre paper per year. That is the equivalent of saving more than 250,000 trees or more than the number of trees required to print three Sunday editions of the New York Times. Dell established its Forest Products Stewardship Model in 2004, available at www.dell.com/paper.

Dell is committed to eliminate in new products all remaining uses of brominated flame retardants (BFRs) and polyvinyl chloride (PVC) by 2009, as acceptable alternatives are identified that will not compromise product performance and will lower product health and environmental impacts. Dell also is meeting the requirements of the RoHS directive worldwide (www.dell.com/rohs). Dell’s chemical-use policy ( www.dell.com/environment) recognises a precautionary approach to materials selection.

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