Fujitsu Siemens Computers is the leading European IT provider with a strategic focus on next-generation Mobility and Dynamic Data Center products, services and solutions. With a platform and services portfolio of exceptional depth, our offering extends from handhelds through desktops to enterprise-class IT infrastructure solutions and services offerings. Fujitsu Siemens Computers has a presence in all key markets across Europe, the Middle East and Africa, with the services division extending coverage up to 170 countries worldwide. Leveraging the strengths, innovation and global reach of our joint shareholders, Fujitsu Limited and Siemens AG, we make sure we meet the needs of customers: large corporations, small and medium enterprises and private users. To meet international standards for corporate social responsibility, Fujitsu Siemens Computers is a member of the United Nations Global Compact.

For more information on Fujitsu Siemens Computers, please visit http://www.fujitsu-siemens.com

Fujitsu Siemens Computers invents and builds its products in Augsburg and Sömmerda, Germany. Delivering PCs and servers from these German manufacturing facilities, which are Europe’s most modern ones, allow us to response to customers’ requirement in a very fast and flexible way in our EMEA market.

The company’s Management System is certified according to ISO 9001 (Quality) and ISO 14001 (Environment) since many years. And the Certificate includes the factories and all other sites in EMEA.

Besides the ISO-driven requirements and aspects our Management System and our processes are based on these four fundamental Management Principles:

• Outstanding quality is essential for our customers and for our success
• We use our creativity and innovative technology skills to preserve our environment
• We take responsibility for the safety and health of our employees at work
• We stick to our company values and ethics principles

So, our Environmental Management System is a fully integrated approach to environmental protection and is including all employees and suppliers by motivation and by contracts, respectively. This system is representing a closed learning loop, starting from product development towards production, product use, remarketing & recycling, and back again to next product designs. And it is in place since the year 1988 when the company started with taking back and recycling old IT equipment.

An impressive list of milestones demonstrates our long tradition in environmental pioneering and social commitment, from the first ‘Guideline for environmental conscious design’ (1992), first ‘Green PC’ with the Energy Star in the market (1993), first IT manufacturer to receive the Blue Angel eco label (1994), …, to first ‘green’ mainboard (2002) which was significantly ahead of legal requirements (RoHS).

Expensive and not state-of-the-art – these are the two most common judgments passed on environmentally friendly products. Fujitsu Siemens Computers not only refutes both of these arguments with its Green PC, but also views the company's own environmental initiative as an important motor for the innovative drive of the enterprise.

In product development, purchasing and production we stick to our Statement of Precautionary Principle: We are committed to eliminating the use of harmful and potentially harmful substances in our products and production processes in order to minimize any risk to end users and to the environment. Therefore, minimizing hazardous substances wherever possible – and going beyond legal requirements – is an important target of our Environmental Policy and our Global Sourcing Strategy. Thus, our suppliers have to sign our above mentioned ‘Guideline’, and we recently joined the ‘Design for the Environment’ Program at U.S. EPA.

Our continuous efforts in reducing both energy use and waste volume during production at the Augsburg plant shows a steadily declining amount of power consumption in kWh / PC (by 60 %) and waste volume in kg / PC (by 70 %) during last 12 years.

However, the (by far) highest amount of energy consumption in the product life-cycle of a PC occurs during its use – depending on customer’s needs and behavior, of course. Therefore, it is very important to inform (and probably educate) customers how to optimize use of energy-consuming products like computers and others.

Coming down from some easy calculations (reference: http://www.eu-EnergyStar.org) and comparisons, it’s quite obvious that a ‘best practice’ PC from Fujitsu Siemens Computers may consume 60 kWh per year only, while a ‘typical’ configuration may use 160 kWh / a (or even more).

So, it may be helpful to show these differences to customers in an easy-to-understand manner. A simple (!) sticker or information put on the product might be useful and should strongly be considered by the industry and all standardizing bodies involved – and being introduced, soon.

By the way, comparing the CO2 emissions, it might be interesting to see that the energy consumption of a ‘best practice’ PC (60 kWh/a) which is equivalent to a CO2 emission of 37 kg/a will be in the comparable range of driving a car (typical CO2 emission: 186 g/km) over a distance of 200 km. – So, telephone conferences and net-meetings with the help of PCs will significantly contribute to our savings potentials regarding greenhouse gases.

The company’s Management System is certified according to ISO 9001 (Quality) and ISO 14001 (Environment) since many years. And the Certificate includes the factories and all other sites in EMEA.

• First, the entire system is inspected in order to possibly sell it again as a used system and thus to extend the life cycle.
• If this is not feasible, components or assemblies are refurbished and reused for repairs, but not for the production of new equipment. Reusable used systems are marketed by Fujitsu Siemens Computers over its distribution network and on its own online shop under the heading of “Refurbished and Recycled”
• Finally, the equipment is disassembled and separated into up to 50 different material groups. Qualified partners handle the material recycling. The recycling processes are taken into account in the development of new products.

The share of materials that cannot be recycled or burned has been reduced to about two percent.

By setting up its own recycling center and picking the right recycling partners, Fujitsu Siemens Computer helps to prevent electronic waste from being exported illegally into developing countries.

The new eco-design requirements coming soon (target: mid 2007) and the European-wide legislation for Energy-using Products (EuP) will certainly challenge both product manufacturers and users. It will be necessary to understand that environmentally-friendly products and production are not ‘for free’. However, our experience shows that ecology and economy can be balanced if a corporate sense of responsibility is the driving force.

Working together with representatives from the different industries, research institutes, governmental and non-governmental organizations, etc. – and based on our long experience as a market leader for Green PC products – we used to demonstrate our company’s responsibility in the information age.

Save the planet by Green IT !

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Symposium "Information Technology, Competitiveness and the Environment" in Helsinki, November 20, 2006
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