We are living beyond our means and it’s time to act!
But why is sustainability so important? Let me give you a number to tray and make the topic a bit more tangible—1.7 Earths. This is the amount of resources we humans are consuming every year. We are clearly living well beyond our means and it is time to step up and make changes, particularly in business. When companies set themselves sustainability objectives, they become more attractive to customers, employees and investors.
With this is mind, many businesses have put sustainability objectives on their agendas—including Bechtle and HP. By doing so, we aren’t just taking entrepreneurial and ecological responsibility, but we are also strengthening loyalty among our partners and customers as everyone can monitor how successful we are at achieving our objectives. The strong partnership between Bechtle and HP is further bolstered by similar sustainability goals.
Sustainability – Bechtle and HP’s strategic action areas.
Sustainability is a complex, multi-dimensional topic, which is why it’s important for businesses to break it down into action areas. In its Sustainability Strategy 2030, Bechtle defined four areas of action:
- Ethical business practices – We fulfil our duty to ensure human rights are respected along our supply chain.
- We embrace a sustainable environmental approach to conserve our climate and resources into the future. One of Bechtle’s objectives is to become CO2-neutral in the areas of business it has influence.
- People – We embody fairness and value our business partners and employees
- Digitalisation – We are shaping a sustainable digital future. This includes expanding our product portfolio with sustainable hardware, software and services.
In its strategy, HP focuses on similar topics, taking into account the environment, people and society as a whole. HP has a spotlight on developing a regenerative circular economy without CO2 emissions and creating the industry’s most sustainable portfolio of technologies, services and solutions. But the people haven’t been forgotten either. HP is company that epitomes diversity, equality and inclusion, but also ensures that the lives of those people along the entire supply chain are improved.
Technology as an opportunity for society.
Only by working together can we succeed in achieving our sustainability goals, which is why HP has added “Community” to its goals, as together with partners like Bechtle, positive changes can be achieved. But it doesn’t stop there. HP has made it its mission to empower society through the power of technology and help bridge the digital divide.
It’s clear from concrete projects and success the extent to which HP and Bechtle are striving to achieve their goals as both companies are paying particular attention to product lifecycles and are supporting more durable products and sustainable procurement processes. As an example, Bechtle Remarketing GmbH is helping the company reduce its CO2 footprint by professionally refurbishing used IT components and working parts, which can then be used by other companies and organisations. With the Bechtle Box, Bechtle Logistik und Service GmbH offers its customers a way of saving packing materials during the transportation of their devices. Companies can also save on logistics costs by consolidating orders, and, because less space is taken up by the packing materials, fewer delivery vehicles are out on the roads.
Reducing the CO2 footprint.
If you look closely at a product’s lifecycle, you’ll see that the most resources are used during production, and this is where targeted measures can be used to the greatest effect to reduce CO2 levels. HP sets particular store in reusing materials, using resources sparingly and leveraging renewable energies in the production process in order to minimise its CO2 footprint. The vendor considers a product’s lifecycle from the very beginning and ensures that materials such as plastic are used in the production of other goods at the end of the product’s life.
Sustainability in design.
Sustainability starts well before production with a product’s design. They have to be designed in such a way that potential repairs are possible and individual components can be easily replaced so as to extend the product’s lifecycle. Design also comes into play when it comes to recycling because it’s important that valuable materials are built in in such a way that they can easily be removed. Sustainably produced packaging, the processing of recycled plastics, e.g. From the world’s oceans and reducing CO2 along the entire supply chain—HP products have it all.