Dell completed or exceeded 75 percent of its goals ahead of schedule (under the vision of “Reducing Our Impact“). The company recovered two billion pounds of used electronics and reused 100 million pounds of recycled-content and other sustainable materials in their products. The success for Dell in becoming an even greener company is set out in a series of strategic objective and social impact reports.
Other achievements include the company launching a process to use recycled material — Polyvinyl Butyral (rPVB) — from car windshields to create the protective, waterproof lining of Dell laptop bags and backpacks. A second example is with introducing an e-waste tracker pilot, which was launched in partnership with Basel Action Network (BAN) to track the disposal of its electronic components and seek opportunities for recycling.
This sets the foundation for Dell Technologies’ new 2030 strategic vision. The new initiative is titled “Progress Made Real“, and it will focus on creating positive social impact by advancing sustainability, cultivating inclusion and transforming lives with technology.
In coming in early on the 2020 sustainability goals, Dell surpassed its 2020 goal of using 100 million pounds of recycled-content or otherwise sustainably sourced materials in their products. The approaching milestone was confirmed to Digital Journal in May 2019 by David Lear, VP of Corporate Sustainability.
Lear commented on why environmental concerns are central to Dell’s ethos: “A company’s social impact and environmental footprint must be core to its business. With more participation from businesses and consumers, we can scale closed-loop processes (where materials from old electronics are recycled back into new electronics), whether that’s plastics, gold, or rare earth magnets.”
With the company’s 2030 plan, Dell intends to continue to accelerate the circular economy (an economic system based on designing out waste and pollution, keeping products and materials in use for as long as possible, and finding ways to regenerate natural systems), reduce the impact of Dell’s operations, support customers’ efforts to reduce environmental impacts, and champion the many people who build Dell products.
