Ecological initiatives

Every year, 8 million tonnes of discarded water bottles and disposable plastic end up in our oceans. HP is doing all it can to reverse this dire situation. For example, we used as much as 1.8 million kilos of ocean-bound plastic to make new products.

This return and recycling programme sees to easy and convenient recycling of original HP inkjet and LaserJet accessories, computer hardware (regardless of brand) and rechargeable batteries. We thus recycle returned products properly, process them into new products and prevent millions of tonnes of waste from ending up in landfills. Hard to believe? The figures don’t lie: thanks to this programme, we have already recycled more than 875 million original ink and toner cartridges!

We can understand that reading something on paper can be useful. We can also understand that you prefer to print in a sustainable way. That’s why we’d like to introduce you to HP Instant Ink. It’s our sustainable ink and toner solution. Sustainable… how so?

• We deliver your new cartridges to your home. So you don’t have to go to the shop.
• And what about us? We can reduce packaging and shipping (we deliver directly to your home and do not have to send the cartridges to the shops in a box first).
• With every delivery, we will give you a prepaid envelope in which you can collect your old cartridges to send them back for recycling.

Forest First also focuses on sustainable printing. For every page you print – regardless of the paper brand – HP invests in protecting, restoring or managing forests. Of course, we don’t do this alone. We work closely with trusted environmental NGOs that are recognized experts on forest ecosystems.

In 2019, we entered into a five-year partnership – the Sustainable Forest Collaborative – with WWF and yet other NGOs not only to manage 200,000 hectares of forest, but also to protect and restore them. Under this agreement, we will donate $ 11 million to WWF to support two projects. These include restoring part of the endangered Atlantic forest in Brazil and managing Chinese state farms and forest plantations in a sustainable way. We are also contributing to the science-based targets for forests developed by the WWF. This provides guidance on the quantity and quality of forests needed in key regions. In this way, forest ecosystems can be restored and protected and additional benefits for people, plants and animals can be guaranteed; which is also good for your organization.

Not only do we try to make our new products with as much ocean-bound plastic as possible, but we also look at the packaging of the products themselves. We thus aim to achieve a 75 % reduction in disposable plastic packaging by 2025 compared with 2018. And as to whether we are on track: in 2020, we achieved a 19 % reduction. To meet our target, we focus our sustainable packaging strategy on three areas:

• Eliminate: we try to eliminate unnecessary packaging and difficult-to-recycle materials such as plastic foam
• Innovate: we make packaging with sustainable fibres and recycled plastics
• Circulate: we give preference to materials with high recycled content and easily recyclable materials that can circulate smoothly

To improve efficiency, save costs and reduce negative environmental impact, we do everything possible to optimize our logistics network. We consolidate shipments wherever possible and try to send them directly to customers or local distribution centres. We prefer to do this by train because the CO₂ emissions are significantly lower than when transported by plane or boat.