HP's Innovation Amid Harshest Conditions And Lessons Learnt


12/10/2020

HP diverted over “1.7 million pounds of plastic materials” from entering into the ocean.


Dailycsr.com – 09 December 2020 – The sustainability and social impact officer of HP, Ellen Jackowski, talks about early March when the company’s new building in Haiti had completed and they had received the “plastic washing line equipment”, while the installation team members from the U.S., Germany and Canada had their airlines’ tickets confirmed as HP geared up to deliver on its final and critical phase of its “$2 million investment” on expanding “ocean-bound plastic supply chain” in the island nation of Haiti. However, the early 2020 plans fell victim of the global pandemic.
 
Travelling by air came to sudden halt while work places switched to remote models as countries “closed their borders” to “contain” the virus from spreading. This emergency development came as a blow to HP’s global team who worked through “multiple obstacles” on this project over four years for HP informed:
“Relocating a portion of our supply chain and building a new business model in the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere comes with a unique set of challenges”.
 
HP took up these challenges along with its partners, namely “Lavergne, First Mile, and Work”, and sought innovative ways to work “under some of the harshest conditions in the world”. The efforts are worth making given the rewards, informed HP, as the company’s efforts have “already diverted more than 1.7 million pounds of plastic materials” from entering into the ocean.
 
The plastic thus gathered gets “combined other plastics” such as “recovered materials from HP Planet Partners” and remodelled into “HP products and printing supplies” which includes “displays, notebooks, mobile workstations, enterprise Chromebooks, and consumer notebooks containing ocean-bound plastic”. Furthermore, HP also informed that:
“This initiative has already created 1,100 new income opportunities for adults in Haiti and we’ve opened two new learning centers equipped with HP ProBook x360 Education Edition laptops and HP printers, providing more than 150 children with quality education, food, and medical assistance”.
 
With the inclusion of a “plastic washing line” into its supply chain of the island nation, HP expects to generate an additional thousand “new income opportunities” besides helping Haiti to grow it its “recycling capabilities” in order to “compete better on the international plastics market”. However, the initiative of HP’s could not be contained by the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic for it mattered in “driving environmental, social, and economic impact for the people of Haiti”.
 
To know further about HP’s initiative, kindly click on the link given below:
https://press.hp.com/us/en/blogs/2020/lessons-in-innovation-harshest-conditions.html
 
 
References:
3blmedia.com