Dell reduced water use intensity, measured as cubic meters of water per square meter of building space, by 3.3 percent in 2012 compared to the previous fiscal year and 5.2 percent since fiscal year 2010. But in the US, water use intensity increased 15.9 percent from 2011. Dell said extreme heat and drought condition led to the increase, despite conservation efforts.
Dell said last September that it would develop a new way of measuring its carbon footprint to include some of the largest supply chain and customer impacts on scope 3 emissions. Dell’s operational footprint is relatively small compared to the overall end-to-end footprint of its products and services, the company said at the time.
Dell said in its 2012 report that has launched pilot activities to develop a framework to expand its GHG emission measurements. The company intends to measure energy consumption at a more detailed level, including identifying metrics for improvement across different types of business operations.
In 2012, Dell achieved the goals set out in its 3Cs (cube, content, curb) packaging strategy, by reducing the size of packaging more than 12 percent (from 2008), increasing the amount of recycled and renewable content in packaging to up to 40 percent, and ensuring that up to 75 percent of packaging is recyclable at curbside. This work eliminated more than 20 million pounds of packaging material since 2008 and helped spur use of innovative and biodegradable materials such as bamboo and mushrooms, the company said.
Also in FY 2012, Dell made all its removable media storage devices, memory and hard drives BFR/CFR/PVC-free. It exceeded its goal of cutting 100,000 tons of lead and 60,000 tons of BFRs between FY04 and FY12, with total reductions of 168,000 tons of lead and 105,731 tons of BFRs.
But it missed a goal of making all newly introduced Dell personal computing products BFR/CFR/PVC-free by the end of 2011.
Dell started offering BFR/CFR/PVC-free standard configurations of all Latitude laptop and XPS 13 Ultrabook products earlier this fiscal year, and says it plans to introduce more such products.
