When Dell published its 2011 Corporate Responsibility report this past September we noted that we were updating our environmental strategy. We are pleased to report our progress.
During the review of our goals and metrics, three themes emerged:
- Dell must provide deeper detail about its energy consumption and emissions generation
- Dell must expand its view beyond our own operations to include impacts in its supply chain and our customers' facilities and,
- Dell must expand its engagement with its suppliers on sustainability-related issues.
Dell’s transition from primarily a hardware manufacturer to a solutions and services provider changes the nature of its impacts. Accordingly, while we will continue our current focus on operational impacts, we will expand our field of view to include other impacts. To size these impacts, we'll use the Scope 3 GHG emissions framework provided by the World Resources Institute (WRI). This defines 15 categories of GHG emissions impacts – from those generated in our supply chain, to emissions generated from customer use. As part of our commitment for fiscal year 2012 (FY12). We will investigate these and determine whether the results are sufficient to produce meaningful estimates of category impacts.
Our work with our supply chain on corporate responsibility is also expanding. In addition to our work on labor issues and emissions reporting, we are now discussing issues such as water quality, conflict minerals and innovative workforce management. Also, we have recently launched a new program with the Dutch Sustainable Trade Initiative (IDH) to move beyond monitoring and accelerating improvements by building capacity within our suppliers.
Additional detail on our updated goals and metrics can be found here.
We've got a lot of work ahead, but we’re excited about our new goals, metrics and initiatives. We look forward to the conversation and sharing more about our journey in the coming months and in our next Corporate Responsibility report. We welcome your feedback and insights.
