Green Walk Beats Green Talk

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Growth Blurs Impact

Hewlett-Packard recently regaled a roomful of analysts with its environmental initiatives. John Frey, manager for corporate environmental strategies at HP, told of all the ways the company is being earth-friendly and stated that the company wants to "reduce the energy used by our products and operations 20% by 2010." It's an admirable goal, but Frey admitted that this 20% is really a per-product goal. That is, the amount of energy to make and sell a single product—say, a PC—will by 2010 be reduced to only 80% of its 2007 amount.

But consider how Frey's goals mesh with those of HP's product managers, who if given their druthers would sell twice as many products in 2010 as they did in 2007. Let's do some simple math: If one unit of product uses one unit of energy during its life cycle, and the company sells 10 units during 2007, it will consume 10 units of energy that year. If the company succeeds in reducing that consumption to 0.8 units, that's good, but if it sells 20 units in 2010, it will use 16 units of energy—more than the 10 units in 2007. The good intentions are lost in the growth curve. Now, 16 is better than 20, but have you seen the pace of polar ice-cap melt lately?

I don't mean to look askance at HP's noble efforts, in part because they're actually pretty similar to those of other companies. One of my favorites is AMD's plan to capture rainwater in its new facilities in Austin, Tex., and pipe it down to the basement as part of a giant natural air-conditioning system. Brilliant. Not grabbing that water would just burn more fossil fuel.

Population Explosion

But here's the sad fact: The real driver of environmental disaster is population. People, vast numbers of them, are the underlying cause of all of this wreckage. Even if population growth hits zero worldwide (and it hasn't yet), the number of people on earth will still expand for several decades. As it is, we're likely to reach 9 billion some time in midcentury. And HP's product managers are right to want to sell PCs to every new human.

Companies clambering aboard the enviro-bandwagon should understand that the buyer is going to raise an eyebrow when they crow about how much good they're doing. Merely existing—breathing, eating, and so forth—is bad for the earth when billions of people go at it all at once. And making computers has a far greater impact.

Customers are right to be cynical about most green propaganda. It's the old Titanic deck-chair rearrangement game. Computer makers, by the same token, can't stop trying to improve. Green is table stakes now. However, they should go lightly on the messaging. It's O.K. to say you're doing your best within the constraints of having to make a living. But don't expect people to praise you for what you should have been doing—and then some—all along.

Kay is the founder and president of Endpoint Technologies Associates (www.ndpta.com), a market research firm. He writes an occasional column on the computer hardware industry at http://www.businessweek.com/technology/.