PC makers Dell and HP have both released research this month pointing out the progress they have made when it comes to recycling and re-using old hardware.
For its part, HP announced late last week that it had reached its goal to recycle approximately half-a-billion kilos of electronics, and had set itself a new goal to process another half-billion by the end of 2010.
The company's chief executive Mark Hurd went as far as to say that pursuing an environmental strategy is good for business. "We've reached the tipping point where the price and performance of IT are no longer compromised by being green, but are now enhanced by it."
Dell has also been pushing its environmental credentials this week with launch of a joint survey with IDC into IT asset disposal. Dell claims it recovered 35.6 million kilos of unwanted computer equipment in 2006. HP claims a figure of 85 million kilos in the same period.
Dell also claims it is the only computer manufacturer to offer consumers a no-charge recycling service for its own branded equipment worldwide without requiring new product purchases.
The public relations push around recycling from both vendors comes shortly after the Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment directive was fully enforced under UK law at the beginning of July. All the major tech vendors took a keen interest in the legislation, as it has resulted in them effectively having to pay a green tax for the percentage of equipment they contribute to the e-waste stream based on their market share.
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Although HP claims it is leading the market when it comes to the tonnage of IT it currently recycles, some critics have pointed out that these figures do not mean much without some context as to how much hardware the company is putting into the market.
"These are impressive quantities but I would be interested to know how this relates to tonnage of new products shipped," said Jonathan Selwyn, chief executive of the UK Centre for Economic and Environmental Development.
But HP's environmental takeback compliance manager Kirstie McIntyre claimed that it's not fair to compare how much the company recycles with how much hardware it sells.
"It is a good question, but it's a difficult one to answer. We are one of the few companies that are prepared to say what that figure is. There is a variation in the time between the product sales and the product return."
McIntyre added that if HP was too aggressive about pushing the concept of what percentage of its products it recycles, then it could be accused of trying to increase that figure by pushing customers to use products for a shorter amount of time. "If we work on return rate rather than total tonnage, we could be accused of trying to get companies to return products to us sooner, which wouldn't be environmentally responsible," she said.
HP does release a rate-of-return figure in its annual global citizenship report, which was about 10 percent in 2006. But McIntyre claimed that even this figure was made public more out of a sense of duty than a feeling it added much to the debate. "It goes all over the place, that is the problem — there are so many variables. We feel that we need to report that figure even if we think it's not very useful," she said.
