How HP is advancing digital equity and sustainability

One of the leading providers of PCs, printers and accessories, HP has grown to become an industry leader in developing sustainable devices, solutions and services adopting circular design, and enabling digital upskilling globally.

For 15 straight years, HP has been ranked in the top 1 per cent of companies for social and environmental efforts by EcoVadis, a leading global sustainability rating provider.

Circular economy

According to HP’s Sustainable Impact Report 2024, more than four billion pounds of recycled, reused and renewable materials have been used in its products and packaging thanks to its circular usage policies since 2019.  As a result, HP has increased the percentage of recycled metals used in laptops and other personal devices by 54 per cent as of 2024, with up to 90 per cent of those metals being recycled magnesium and aluminium.

This has been achieved by enabling end users to recycle HP products with ease. For instance, its All-In Plan makes recycling of used cartridges and printers straightforward by providing them with prepaid shipping labels and recycling envelopes. Customers are also able to turn in their old and used HP equipment via the HP IT Asset Disposition (ITAD) service, which collects these devices and provides customers with residual value as applicable.

This implies that circularity is extended to HP devices as a whole, rather than just their component materials and metals. Up to 85 per cent of these used products collected by HP’s ITAD service have been cleared to be refurbished and remade as new, thereby reducing e-waste as well as the company’s carbon footprints dramatically. For instance, the refurbished EliteBook 840 G7 is estimated to have a 72 per cent lower carbon footprint compared to a new equivalent PC.

HP’s product carbon footprint has been reduced by 46 per cent since 2019 and now accounts for just 25 per cent of the company’s total footprint.

Preserving the ecosystem

Overall, HP has reduced carbon emissions by 41 per cent during this period. This is, in large part, due to its US operations now being 100 per cent powered by renewable sources of energy, with 94 per cent of its suppliers following its lead, as well as its various undertakings to protect the natural world.

This includes HP’s partnership with the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), which has helped conserve more than 565,000 acres of forest, and its efforts to repurpose materials like discarded fishing nets in the oceans into new materials in its latest products.

That implies that HP is well on course to reach its 2030 target of reducing value chain greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions – from production to end customer usage – by 50 per cent, and bring it down to net zero emissions by 2040, all in compliance with the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDG).

The human revolution

At the core of these goals is the drive to reduce gender and skill disparities in learning and education, and promoting digital equity in society. In this too, HP strives to remain an industry leader, working towards providing people with universal access to technological and business education across the globe. 

As societies become digital, the rapid pace of technological advances such as AI causes socioeconomic divides to keep widening. The company’s HP LIFE program attempts to address precisely those. An absolutely free business skills training programme, it has reached over two million new learners since 2016 with more than 3.5 million courses in eight languages – Arabic, Bahasa Indonesia, Chinese, English, French, Hindi, Portuguese and Spanish – offered in 200 countries and territories worldwide.

Best of all, these programmes are easily accessible both online, via the HP LIFE platform, and offline via the HP LIFE app. It’s also being made available in-person through partners such as the United Nations Development Program(UNDP), World Alliance of YMCAs and others who use it as part of their broader curricula as a value-added resource for trainers and mentors providing educational empowerment and employment skills to those who need it most.

These programmes range in topics from the latest technological advances, such as AI for business professionals or digital marketing and social media promotion, to employment basics such as writing business emails and presentations, or financial concepts like how to manage cash flow, profit and loss or funding for business. In other words, it gives people all over the world – including women, young learners or the economically underprivileged who may not have access to it otherwise – the opportunity to acquire some of the most in-demand and essential business concepts to help them enhance their employability or even start their own business.

HP AI Companion

In tandem, the company has been focused on leveraging these advances in technology to ensure its customers benefit from the advantages HP’s software and hardware can provide. Nothing expresses that better than the HP AI Companion, which now comes preinstalled in HP computers, and is a personal assistant generative AI tool built to help users be more productive and better leverage their HP next-gen AI PC.    

For instance, the Libraries/Analyse function allows users to more easily explore and work with the information on their own system to get insights, filter or compare data and highlight or summarise key points in their own personal files. Best of all, this can be done directly on the device without going through the cloud, providing an additional level of protection for your data.

You can always toggle to the cloud mode when you need access to larger pools of information. While the Ask function allows you to search for and summarise long articles or write a paper, blog or article right from your home page, the Perform function works silently in the background to ensure that your system is performing optimally at all times through intelligent settings tailored specifically to your usage patterns.

HP’s vision, then, is not just to push the envelope when it comes to the latest developments in PC or printer technology but also to build a more inclusive and sustainable digital economy.