Greener Materials: What's Inside Our Products — And What's Not
| The Dell Approach: Recycled Content and the Precautionary Principle | |
| Greener products help you lower your impact on the earth. But to make a greener product, you need greener ingredients. To us at Dell, that boils down to two ideas: increasing the amount of recycled and recyclable materials in our products; and working with suppliers to use safe, reliable and environmentally preferable materials. Here are the keys to our approach: |  |
- We adopt the world's strongest environmental requirements for all our products globally.
- We increase the amount of recycled content in our products and packaging on a regular basis.
- We voluntarily reduce and/or eliminate harmful chemicals well ahead of regulation, across the portfolio rather than specific 'show-and-tell' products.
- We proactively engage ourselves in leadership efforts to find better chemical alternatives for our industry.
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| Challenge: | Solution: | Benefits: |
| Help our customers lower their ecological impact by designing greener electronics. | Adopt strict environmental requirements for all markets, increase recycled content, be proactive on sensitive materials, promote better alternatives. | Less waste, fewer risks to human health and the environment. |
The Strongest Environmental Requirements as Our Global Standard
We hold ourselves to the world's highest environmental standards, often exceeding legal requirements when it comes to providing you with safe materials in our products. For example, not just for Europe-bound products but globally, we have adopted the provisions of European Union's Restriction of Hazardous Substances (RoHS) directive, which is perhaps the world's baseline for substance restriction requirements for electrical and electronic products.
Dell also supports and operates in harmony with the European Union's Registration, Evaluation, Authorization and Restriction of Chemicals (REACH). REACH, as it is better known, is a sweeping set of regulations that came into force in 2007 and will, over the coming years, evaluate and regulate thousands of chemicals used by numerous industries.
Read our position statement on REACH here >
Read our REACH disclosure list here >
Increasing the Recycled Content in Our Products
There's a saying: One man's trash is another man's treasure. For us, recycled plastics, including those from discarded water bottles, play an increasingly large role in the makeup of our products. In 2009, for example, we shipped approximately 7.2 million pounds of post consumer recycled plastic in select monitors and systems, equivalent to recycling more than 263 million water bottles.
We've also integrated the equivalent of more than 9.5 million half-gallon milk jugs into our packaging. That's enough to stretch from Florida to Maine — more than 1,500 miles!
Proactive, Voluntary Action on Environmentally Sensitive Chemicals
Historically, throughout our industry, some of the chemicals used to make electronics have posed risks to human health and/or the environment. At Dell, we have been reducing and/or eliminating these chemicals for years (see our elimination milestones here) and addressing these risks often well before regulations.
The reason is simple: We are committed to anticipating, rather than responding to, environmental issues. Since our founding, we've taken a precautionary approach to environmental health and safety issues. And in 2005, we formally adopted the precautionary principle as the foundation of our chemical use policy: If reasonable scientific grounds indicate that a substance could pose significant environmental or human health risks — even if the risks lack full scientific certainty — action should be taken to eliminate its use.
Since 1996, we've voluntarily worked to eliminate substances of concern from our products. In 2002, we targeted 28 groups of these substances, which far exceed the six restricted by the European Union (EU) Restriction of Hazardous Substances (RoHS) directive. We prioritize those chemicals that regulatory bodies, our customers and nongovernmental organizations tell us are most important to restrict.
Arsenic: Arsenic is commonly used during the manufacturing of LCD-panel glass to remove bubbles. There's no inherent danger of contamination for the end user, but the chemical poses disposal issues after the product reaches the end of its useful life. We introduced arsenic-free display glass in laptops and display monitors in 2009. Since then, we've been working to introduce it across our portfolio.
Mercury: In 2010 we completed the transition of all our new laptop displays to LED illumination, which eliminates the need for mercury. By making this transition, we have avoided the use of an estimated 345 kg of mercury in our products. We are committed to expanding our portfolio of mercury-free, LED-based products. For more information on recycling and disposing mercury-containing products, see www.dell.com/hg
Lead: We have actively and voluntarily worked to eliminate lead from our products worldwide, in harmony with the EU's RoHS directive. But we've gone even further: RoHS includes exemptions that allow for certain amounts of lead in enterprise-class products. However, in late 2007, we began launching lead-free1 enterprise configurations of servers such as R900 and R905. In early 2008, we launched our first lead-free blade servers, the PowerEdge™ M600 and M605. Since then, all new basic-configuration PowerEdge servers have been lead-free.
Brominated/chlorinated flame retardants (BFRs and CFRs) and polyvinyl chloride (PVC): We have been proactively reducing or eliminating environmentally sensitive flame retardants from our products since 1996. For example, we eliminated all polybrominated biphenyls (PBBs) and polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs), including decabromodiphenyl ether (decaBDE), from all Dell products four years before the EU's RoHS directive took effect. As for PVC, we have been restricting it in our products since 2002 — and also banned its use in our packaging that year.
In products, rather than delivering one BFR/CFR/PVC-free computer at a time, we are working to eliminate all remaining uses of these materials from our entire product line, including use of tetrabromobisphenol A (TBBP-A) in circuit boards. By the end of 2011, all newly introduced Dell personal computing products will be BFR/CFR/PVC-free2, as acceptable alternatives are identified, which will lower product health and environmental impacts without compromising product performance.
To accomplish this, we are addressing BFR/CFR/PVC at the commodity and component level. All removable media storage devices, memory and hard disk drives became BFR/CFR/PVC-free in 2011. Most of our laptop displays and keyboards were BFR/CFR/PVC-free. We also actively support legislation to formally ban the use of these materials. For the most recent recast of RoHS, we specifically requested that a ban be included.
Dell BFR/CFR/PVC-Reduced and BFR/CFR/PVC-Free Offerings to Date 
Elimination of HBCDD, DEHP, BBP and DBP: As of July 1, 2010, we proactively eliminated from all newly designed Dell products four chemicals that were originally expected to be restricted under a new recast of the EU's RoHS around 2014. They are: hexabromocyclododecane (HBCDD), bis (2-ethylhexyl) phthalate (DEHP), butyl benzyl phthalate (BBP) and dibutylphthalate (DBP). While the EU RoHS recast no longer includes additional substance bans, we are continuing with our proactive elimination of these four chemicals.
Continually Evaluating Chemical Safety
We have adopted strict principles to continue to eliminate toxic substances — and to evaluate the environmental and human health aspects of possible substitution chemicals. For a full list of substances and updates on our progress, refer to 'Materials Restricted for Use.'
In addition, we have policies, processes and corrective actions in place to ensure that our suppliers adhere to our materials use guidelines:
- Our 'Materials Restricted for Use' document has been incorporated into all Dell engineering specifications and supplier contractual agreements
- We require suppliers to sign a Supplier Declaration of Conformity (SDoC), modeled after ISO/IEC 17050-1, to ensure that all product materials comply with Dell's environmental policy. This also allows us to understand the current uses of environmentally sensitive substances in products and develop strategies to eliminate the remaining uses of these substances.
- We've implemented process controls and corrective actions throughout our organization and supply chain to ensure substances of concern are replaced and alternative materials are developed for future product generations. We regularly audit our factories and suppliers to ensure that both adhere to our materials use guidelines.
Helping to Drive the Industry's Environmental Standards
Partnering with green chemistry advocates such as Clean Production Action and ChemSec and technology solutions groups such as the International Electronics Manufacturing Initiative (iNEMI), the High Density Packaging User Group (HDPUG) and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Design for Environment Program, we work to introduce safer, effective solutions.
Driving high environmental standards across the industry requires collaboration. Dell is a founding member of both EPEAT and ENERGY STAR and is an active partner with iNEMI, which aims to accelerate improvements in the electronics manufacturing industry for a sustainable future. Dell is also a founding member of the Sustainability Consortium, which takes a scientific approach to measuring, communicating and educating on the environmental, economic and social impacts of consumer goods.
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1 Does not leverage EU RoHS exemption 7b: Lead in solders for servers, storage and storage array systems, network infrastructure equipment for switching, signaling, transmission as well as network management for telecommunications.
2 Dell will adopt the BFR/CFR/PVC-free definition as set forth in the "iNEMI Position Statement on the Definition of 'Low-Halogen' Electronics (BFR/CFR/PVC-Free)." Plastic parts contain <1000 ppm (0.1 percent) of bromine (if the Br source is from BFRs) and <1000 ppm (0.1 percent) of chlorine if the Cl source is from CFRs, PVC or PVC copolymers. All printed circuit board (PCB) and substrate laminates contain bromine/chlorine totaling less than 1,500 ppm (0.15 percent), with maximum chlorine of 900 ppm (0.09 percent) and maximum bromine of 900 ppm (0.09 percent). Service parts after purchase may not be BFR/CFR/PVC-free.
3 Free of BFR, CFR and PVC, excluding the power cord, external power adapter, three internal daughter cards and several motherboard components.
4 BFR/CFR/PVC-free cables available only in North America, Japan and EMEA, excluding Israel.
5 BFR/CFR/PVC-free excludes accessories.
