Dell and Carbon Neutrality: A Chance to Clear the Air

In the modern word, it has to be said that one of the largest issues causing concern for the global community is that of our output of carbon emissions and the increasingly noticeable negative effect it is having on our planet. Carbon neutrality is a topic we are reminded of everyday. As our awareness and understanding of the effects of our society on the planet’s atmosphere continues to increase, we are constantly being placed under more and more pressure to reduce our “carbon footprint” and adopt a more eco-friendly lifestyle. It can be said that every decision regarding any purchase of goods or use of transport will have an effect on our individual carbon emissions. At times the pressure can be so great as to making the right choice that we are beginning to see a new wave of moral panic whereby people are fearing that they are not doing enough to prevent excessive generation of carbon and that the world is now slowly destroying itself by global warming due to the dangerously high levels of CO2 in our atmosphere. On an individual scale it can be said that it’s not hard to change our ways and reduce our footprint simply by making small changes to our daily routine. While this may be true for a person, just how plausible is it for an entire company to aim for ‘carbon neutrality’? And if even possible, would they bother to do it out of genuine concern for the planet’s well being or simply as another way to gain our admiration and trust in order to boost sales and raise the company profile?

One company that has pledged to reach this seemingly unattainable goal is leading computer manufacturer Dell. I shall be investigating the plans, intentions and current methods put in use by Dell in order to gain an insight into the sincerity of their company reform and the motives behind it.
Last year Dell launched a new environmental initiative called the “Zero Carbon Initiative”; an initiative which Dell intends to utilise in order to achieve the title “greenest technology company on earth”. The main aspects of this initiative are to improve the energy efficiency of all future Dell products, reduce the levels of carbon emissions generated from all its research and manufacturing operations, enable customers to offset their carbon emissions with the “Plant A Tree For Me” program, encourage their suppliers to be more eco-friendly, and lastly to increase their use of environmentally sustainable products through the use of more renewable resources.
At the launch of this initiative CEO Michael Dell said "We'll take the lead in setting an environmental standard for our industry that will reflect our partnership with, and direct feedback from, our customers, suppliers and stakeholders, and we intend to maintain that leadership."
Although apparently well intentioned, the initiative has received a mix of both praise and criticism from the public and the press.

The parts of the program which have been most well received include Dell following through with their commitment to assess the carbon emissions performance of all of its primary suppliers, an action often overlooked by many companies. Dell has now requested that all suppliers begin reporting on their individual greenhouse gas emissions and have that data fed into the quarterly business reviews used to measure its suppliers’ performance. The company has threatened to blacklist those suppliers who don’t make an effort to reduce their impact on the environment with Michael Dell himself warning "not to underestimate the seriousness of our intentions" on environmental matters.
Dell’s now famous “Plant A Tree For Me” program has also received a primarily positive response. The idea is that the consumer has the opportunity to make an indirect effort to offset the carbon emissions produced in the creation of every desktop or laptop bought. Each time a purchase is made the consumer is given the option to donate £1 per notebook or £3 per desktop. 100% of this donation is then used solely to fund the planting of trees in professionally managed reforestation projects. In fact the company added to the proposal that Michael Dell would personally match all donations received in the first three months.

When you consider that Dell has gone to such lengths as these in order to minimise its emissions it may be hard to imagine how anyone could not feel that the company is genuine about its concern for the environment. However the plan has still been substantially criticised by several environmental groups. Under these proposals Dells intends on achieving a 15% reduction in carbon intensity by 2012 which sounds satisfactory, however, Dell has not set any definite targets for its overall CO2 reduction by this time. By “carbon intensity” they simply mean a measure of efficiency determined by a comparison between CO2 emissions and annual revenue; essentially CO2 produced per pound (£) income. What this means is that so long as sales rose, efficiency would improve proportionately and therefore given a good year Dell could actually have increased its CO2 output while still meeting its carbon intensity targets.
Another issue is the way Dell constructs its products. A lot of the parts are brought in from other suppliers including such big companies as Sony. Therefore it is possible for a degree of confusion to occur as to who is responsible for what amount of carbon emissions produced i.e. If Sony makes a batteries for Dell products, should the emissions generated during manufacture count for Sony or Dell?
It may also be observed that while the “Plant A Tree For Me” program covers desktops and laptops, it does not cover servers which consume more energy and tend to be powered up for longer. Also the funds received are not actually used by Dell to plant trees themselves, but rather are donated to third party organisations that specialise in carbon offset schemes which in turn have raised concerns. These are due to the lack of a current certification or monitoring system to ensure they are doing the job properly and also to the fact that a carbon offset is arguably invisible; unless you wait 20 years and travel to the other side of the world in order to check the existence of the tree you paid Dell £3 to plant.

Despite these criticisms it would appear to at least the average consumer who’s aware of the initiative that Dell are definitely doing more good than harm and appear to make at least some impact on our environment. In fact on Dells new “Dell Earth” website there is a counter which displays what they claim to be an accurate prediction of just how much CO2 Emissions they have avoided and how much their low power management systems have saved consumers; the figures currently stand at just over 20 million tons of CO2 and 2 billion US Dollars.

Dell Earth

(Taken from www.dell.com/earth)

Also, last year Dell consistently stayed in the top 5 of Greenpeace’s ‘eco friendliness’ chart, despite being marked down in March for still using dangerous chemicals in some of its models.

Greenpeace Rank

(Taken from http://green-base.blogspot.com/2007_06_01_archive.html)

In fact, because the Zero Carbon initiative has generated so much public interest a number of competing electronics suppliers are following suit. IBM and HP have also focused on energy efficiency and Steve Jobs has mentioned sharing the carbon footprint of all Apple products too.

Indeed it is good news to hear that more and more companies are becoming so environmentally aware and that hopefully in the near future we may see every major company adopting a similar practice to Dell; not even necessarily those in the electronics sector but every corporation. However as more companies begin to establish carbon neutral schemes we may encounter the danger of the public relying on such companies to worry about excessive carbon emissions for us. People will start to believe that it is in fact the companies’ job to monitor CO2 levels and begin to neglect keeping watch of their own carbon footprint. If we were to rely solely on the corporations to offset or reduce carbon for us then no progress will ever be made and our carbon deficits will continue to grow. For example, although a step in the right direction, carbon offsetting will never work on its own. Supposing we only plant a tree every time we buy a notebook or desktop? After 3 years a notebook may have generated up to 0.45 tonnes or more through electrical consumption but the planted tree has only absorbed 0.057 tonnes from the atmosphere leaving a carbon deficit of 0.393 tonnes. Assuming after 3 years the notebook is replaced, after a further three years the two have generated 0.9 tonnes and the trees will only have absorbed 0.171 tonnes; a deficit now of 0.729 tonnes.
It is hard to evaluate truly how much Dell cares for the environment, especially when they are reluctant to disclose any financial information regarding its initiative to the public, but from what I have seen and read it does in fact appear to be more of a marketing ploy than anything else. The facts that after those initial three months Dell has apparently made no further contributions to the offsetting program from its own pocket and is still yet to actually go through with blacklisting any of its suppliers are enough to make anyone doubt the supposed intentions of Dells plan. However, I think that it is still an example worth setting for others and as various competitors attempt to top Dell in the carbon-zero race perhaps we will see a change in corporate practice and a significant decline in carbon emissions for good. Until then, Dell’s quest to be the “greenest technology company on earth” will have to do. As some would say: “it’s better than nothing.”

Reference List:
[1] Dell Corporate Website (2007) Dell Sets Goal Of Becoming Greenest Technology Company Viewed on January 10, 2008, from <http://www.dell.com/content/topics/global.aspx/corp/pressoffice/en/2007/2007_06_05_lon_000?c=us&l=en&s=corp>.

[2] Dell Earth Website (2007) Welcome to Dell Earth Viewed on January 10, 2008, from <http://www.dell.com/earth>.

[3] Computing.com Dell launches carbon neutral initiative Viewed on January 11, 2008, from <http://www.computing.co.uk/computing/news/2172359/dell-green>.

[4] Business Green Blog (2007) Dell: the world's greenest tech company or too little, too late Viewed on January 11, 2008, from <http://blog.businessgreen.com/2007/06/dell_the_worlds.html>.

[5] Times Online (2007) Green Dell threatens to blacklist suppliers Viewed on January 12, 2008, from <http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/technology/article1887737.ece?token=null&offset=0>.

[6] Greenbase (2007) Greenpeace’s Study Viewed on January 12, 2008, from <http://green-base.blogspot.com/2007_06_01_archive.html>.

[7] Greenpeace (2007) Dell to go "carbon neutral" Viewed on January 12, 2008, from <http://weblog.greenpeace.org/makingwaves/archives/2007/09/dell_to_go_carbon_neutral.html>.

[8] Techworld (2007) Dell and carbon offsetting Viewed on January 13, 2008, from <http://www.techworld.com/green-it/blogs/index.cfm?entryid=530&blogid=17>.

[9] TechDigest (2007) Lenovo tops Greenpeace's latest eco-charts Viewed on January 13, 2008, from < http://techdigest.tv/2007/04/lenovo_tops_gre.html>