Environmental Sustainability: Operations
EDS recognizes that an effective environmental framework includes a focus on our own operations. We are assessing our global energy usage, adopting sound environmental practices within our facilities and business operations, engaging our employees, partnering with others and transforming our supply chain to reduce our carbon footprint and leverage improvements for clients.
Baselining Our Environmental Impact
EDS is taking the following actions to baseline our environmental impact globally:
- In Australia and New Zealand, EDS has baselined energy usage, calculated carbon emissions and established a goal to reduce emissions by 25 percent through 2010. Actions include a videoconferencing investment targeting a 20 to 30 percent reduction in employees' domestic air travel and a carbon offset program pilot for employees.
- In the UK, EDS partnered with The Carbon Trust to survey energy usage in a sample of facilities and data centres. EDS also partnered with Enviros to conduct an environmental study of all UK facilities and operations and recommend an ongoing carbon management program.
- Globally, EDS is planning a study to define a worldwide baseline for emissions, resource usage and waste, with recommended targets and metrics for ongoing improvements.
Our Facilities
Around the world EDS is taking the following actions to reduce the environmental impact of our facilities:
- Expanding recycling programs globally and engaging employee participation in EDS-owned and leased facilities
- Implementing energy-efficient designs and upgrades to our facilities, including lighting and HVAC systems and controls
- Adopting environmentally sound building standards for use in new and renovated facilities
- Consolidating facilities, where practical, to reduce our overall real estate footprint
- Pursuing opportunities to purchase a higher percentage of our electricity needs from eco-friendly generation sources (wind, solar, water, biomass, etc.)
- Seeking innovative ways to reduce water use and augment municipal water supplies with other sources for irrigation
- Renewing ISO 14001 environmental certification at designated facilities
EDS' world headquarters facility in Plano, Texas, uses innovative solutions to reduce its environmental impact.
- A waste-reduction program resulted in more than 140 metric tons of paper, plastic and aluminum materials recycled from our facilities at world headquarters. In addition, more than 181 metric tons of landscape debris (grass clippings, leaves, tree limbs, etc.) were either reused as mulch on campus or composted for reuse by the city of Plano. Due to the recycle programs currently in place, only 414 metric tons of solid waste were sent to local landfills and 40,000 gallons of waste liquid to treatment facilities.
- A state-of-the-art lighting system pilot that incorporates dimmable, addressable lighting interface (DALI), electronic ballasts and sophisticated scheduling software was initiated. The system leverages natural lighting via multiple atriums using daylight harvesting strategies and provides efficient, uniform lighting to enhance employee productivity and lower costs.
- A complex drainage system on the property reclaims any excess irrigation and rain water and diverts it back to a chain of lakes. In 2007, it is estimated that EDS' headquarters facility reclaimed almost 10 percent of the total irrigation and rain water used on property – more than 23 million gallons.
- A landscaping program encourages using native plants that require less water and fewer pesticides.
Our Data Centers
Data centers' increasing energy demands are rapidly increasing the information technology (IT) sector's carbon footprint. At the same time, carbon regulation and energy scarcity are making energy ever more expensive. Meanwhile, environmentally conscious clients are demanding greener services from their suppliers, including IT service providers. Our environmental strategy will respond to these market drivers and position EDS as a world leader in environmentally sound IT solutions. Our approach is founded on building the world's most efficient data centers, deploying new technologies and eco-friendly services, and exploring new business models that reward energy efficiency.
Employee Engagement
EDS encourages employees to continually improve their personal environmental performance at work, at home and in their communities by providing ideas they can consider and actions they can take to reduce their environmental impact. Here are some ways we engage employees:
- Review environmental sustainability information on the EDS intranet
- Participate in local recycling programs
- Implement energy-efficient computing habits, including power management
- Calculate a personal carbon footprint
- Participate in carbon offset programs, either internally or externally
- Reduce environmental footprint at work, at home and while driving
- Engage in the community
In addition, EDS encourages employees to submit eco-friendly ideas that can benefit EDS and clients through its global Innovative Ideas Program. Ideas are evaluated by functional and regional representatives for further development and implementation.
Materials Used In Operations
As an IT services company, EDS is not a direct manufacturer of products and does not purchase any significant quantity of raw materials (for example, natural resources) for production processes. EDS does, however, consume business supplies, computer hardware (such as desktop computers, servers and mainframes) and paper.
EDS' investment in supply chain transformation increases our ability to reduce consumption and conserve the global resource base. The ability to more precisely track material consumption across products and product categories facilitates EDS' ability to monitor material efficiency and the cost of material flows.
When possible and consistent with business requirements, EDS purchases products manufactured in whole or in part from recycled input materials, such as copier paper and certain administrative supplies.
In addition, eco-friendly computing is at the heart of EDS' environmental sustainability initiatives. We are working with industry groups, alliance partners and other hardware equipment manufacturers to purchase and deploy energy-efficient desktops, laptops and servers, and manage their operation in ways that benefit the environment.
EDS also takes our responsibility for environmentally conscious IT equipment disposal seriously. For our clients and also within our own operations, we use contracted disposal suppliers who follow federal, state and local regulations for IT equipment disposal and offer options such as redeployment, sales, employee gift, donation, disposal and end-of-lease management and return.