With its impressive environmental credentials, the sleek new TouchSmart IQ 500 series PC aptly demonstrates how HP uses cutting-edge functionality as a driver to reduce the environmental impact of its products.
Behind its sleek black casing and slick touch-screen technology, the new TouchSmart PC has astoundingly environmentally friendly credentials. The touch-screen all-in-one PC uses HP power management technology to provide up to 86KWH energy savings compared to PCs without power management enabled; features 100 percent recyclable packaging with more paper and less plastic foam for easier re-use; and the machine itself uses 55 percent less metal and 37 percent less plastic than standard PCs and monitors . It’s therefore no surprise the TouchSmart is Energy Star qualified and EPEAT™ registered at Silver level.
Committed to wedding cutting-edge functionality with incredible environmental performance, the HP Research and Design team showed that when it comes to designing for the environment, it pays to question everything--and to never accept no for an answer.
A clean slate
The HP research team, motivated by Brand Manager Ken Bosley, took an innovative approach to designing the TouchSmart by thinking outside the box from the beginning.
“We sat down and said if we had a clean sheet of paper, what would we do?” explains Bosley. “We said, forget any constraints, let’s look at this on an ideal basis - what would we do if we could do anything?”
Approaching the design of new products in this way allows the HP to innovate unhampered by habit or protocol. Rather than being constrained by established systems, the Research and Design team behind the TouchSmart were able to break from routine to come up with innovative solutions which had multiple benefits.
Win-Win solutions
Focussing on an ideal product that incorporated a sleek, slim, all-in-one design with a high specification had numerous paybacks. For example, the desire for slender, sexy product not only increases consumer appeal, but the resulting reduction in materials use is good for the environment and the bottom line as fewer materials mean lower costs. This symbiosis between environmental benefits and profits is just one demonstration of how the least costly solution is often the most environmentally friendly.
Taking the concept of a TouchSmart, there are many different reasons why it made sense not to have a PC and a monitor. For example, reducing the product size not only reduces the amount of material used in the product, but also the energy required to power it, the amount of packaging required to protect it and the emissions associated with transporting it to the customer while ultimately creating a smaller, more flexible product for the consumer.
It also creates a sleeker, sexier product that is more appealing to consumers, as well as offers an overall better out-of-box experience because it doesn’t require any assembly. A single unit also negates the need for duplication of components, like the two sets of power cords, power supplies and on/off switches which would be required for a separate monitor and PC.
Smashing the status quo
Bosley believes that these dramatic achievements in the TouchSmart were reached by always aiming for the ideal, rather than doing things the way they had always been done.
”We asked: ‘What’s the best way, what’s the obstacle, why aren’t we doing it?’ Usually the answer to ‘Why aren’t we doing this?’ was ‘We’re not sure!’ so we decided to find out.”
Bosley and the team found that it was a question of addressing the philosophy behind the decisions. New ideas often meet with objections and obstacles, but instead of writing them off, the key is to ask what can be done to eliminate the new problem. “The key is not to say we can’t do X because of Y,” enthuses Bosley, “but to say, if the impediment to X is Y, what can we do to eliminate Y? We might need to think about that one for a while, but usually we can find a solution in the end!”
”By taking the attitude that we’d keep moving forward until we can find a problem that we can actually solve, we were able to produce something that was a lot less material, and that used a lot less power and a lot less packaging. And as always, each benefit just fed back into each other!”
”The gains made on the TouchSmart, both in terms of technology and packaging, are now being fed back into the mainstream HP production line,” said David Galvin, the worldwide director of product marketing for HP consumer PCs. “For example, we’re now trying to incorporate more cardboard usage in to the packaging of our mainstream products and looking at ways we can utilise energy efficiencies.”
Beyond 100 percent recyclable packaging
The design team was driven by the knowledge that although many materials, like the EPS foam often used in IT packaging, are recyclable, the lack of local recycling facilities can mean it winds up in a landfill. In addition, customers prefer the ease that comes with recycling just one material. This led the team to cardboard because it has the highest recycling value.
The TouchSmart packaging is truly groundbreaking by being made from 98 percent cardboard. Meeting this target inevitably created a lot of extra work, so it was crucial to get the packaging team on board. However, they soon embraced the challenge of creating packaging that not only could be recycled but that would be recycled.
The team started by photographing everything that was left after a mainstream product had been unpackaged. This helped the design team look at the packaging as waste and to question why things were being done the way they were.
“We asked questions like, ’Why do we have an accessory box and cushions? Why can’t the cushions be the accessory boxes? Why do we have two of these?’” explains Bosley. “Sometimes there is a legitimate reason to do something that seems unnecessary. But we needed to find out what was important and why so we could communicate this more effectively to the R&D team and the packaging guys.”
“When we started to question why we weren’t using more cardboard already, we discovered it was because we didn’t know if it would pass all of our drop tests,” explains Bosley said. “So we did all the drop tests. And it failed the first time, but so did the foam the first time, so we didn’t let that put us off. So we went back to drawing board and tried and tried again until we succeeded.”
The hard work paid off with the creation of 98 percent cardboard packaging for the TouchSmart, and this single material cardboard design is now being applied to the mainstream PC box.
One thing that the design team wasn’t prepared to compromise on was the signature HP ‘black box’ design. “It was very frustrating,” says Bosley, “because the most environmentally friendly scenario is if there was no printing on the cardboard box but a blank box isn’t really feasible. If you print anything at all, it’s the same as if you print the whole thing. We looked into doing a printed sleeve on a plain brown box, but after doing some further research, it seemed that overall, it was better to print on the box itself.”
“It is important for the packaging to look really deluxe to reflect the high-end nature of the product. An all-black box is not ideal environmentally, but it’s the reality of the consumer marketplace. In some stores, the only thing we have to communicate with the consumer is the box itself. To persuade someone to buy an expensive machine when all they have is a brown box that doesn’t say anything is a pretty big leap for most people.”
A quest for less power
The TouchSmart is also notable for its energy efficiency, which was achieved by using the most power efficient chips and notebook technology to reduce energy consumption, heat and noise. In total, through the use of savvy components and intelligent design, the HP power management technology provides up to 45 percent energy savings compared to PCs without power management enabled.
This is particularly impressive when you consider that the TouchSmart has a large screen and a customer experience that requires significant processing power. However, the team found that finding a novel solution to a problem often provides several unexpected benefits.
“The processing power of the TouchSmart creates significant thermal challenges. We realised if we solved the energy problem, we’d solve the thermal challenge of waste heat. Not only does this improve energy consumption, but it also improves reliability as overheating is a major cause of computer malfunction which can lead to disappointed consumers and higher costs for us.”
Another way that the TouchSmart was able to make massive energy savings was by focussing on the sleep mode. Research had demonstrated that consumers leave their technology idle for long periods, yet don’t utilise the power-saving sleep mode as they find it too cumbersome. Recognising this, the TouchSmart default was set to sleep after 15 minutes of being idle, while considerable effort was put into making the TouchSmart wake up extremely quickly. The team’s efforts managed to whittle down the resume time to a speedy three seconds. This rapid resume is essential. Otherwise, the customer will just change the default settings and stop the PC from going to sleep at all.
Weighing up the options
However, there were some areas where the design team had to reluctantly accept defeat. One of these was the screen, which ideally would have used mercury-free LEDs rather than fluorescent backlights. Unfortunately, this was too costly to implement now, but with LEDs becoming more and more affordable, it’s likely to be just a temporary setback for the product series.
One frustration stemmed from vagaries of the international shipment process. For all the efforts to avoid using foam packaging, Bosley discovered that some countries, like China, use single box shipments, rather than pallets of multiple systems. In these single pallet systems, the cardboard packaging was not shock absorbent enough to protect the product in transit and a plastic foam was required instead. However the team is viewing this as only a short-term set back as well, and they’ve pledged to keep working on developing a higher grade cardboard packaging.
Another problem the team grappled with was more fundamental. “You can’t get away from the fact that an energy-efficient computer is still going to be a piece of e-waste eventually,” says Bosley wryly. “However, we did everything we could to make sure the TouchSmart was designed to make it easily disassembled for recycling so the plastic parts can be separated from the metal. We’ve tried to incorporate these factors into the design as much as possible. I wish we could have figured out a way to make the plastic components from recycled plastic. It’s the same with the cardboard packaging. The complexities of the supply chain mean we can’t guarantee a recycled supply. But it’s another thing we’ll keep working on. Our attitude is: just because you can’t solve it right up front, it doesn’t mean you should stop working on it. Keep it on the list for the next project because the world changes.”
Design for the Environment as an everyday part of the process
Despite their incredible efforts, the members of the design team are pragmatists. They realise that at present, the environmental aspects of a technology product are not part of the primary purchasing criteria. However, they are a key part of the HP brand value.
“We feel that if customers trust us as an environmentally responsible brand; that will help influence their purchasing decisions. People associate a company with social and environmental responsibility, not a product. It’s not just about the product itself, it’s also what are we doing at every level, from looking at the social responsibility of our supply chain to the environmental efficiencies of our offices.” This attitude is typical of the HP approach. Knowing that customers trust them on the basis of their commitment to behaving in a socially and environmentally responsible manner, HP’s dedication to designing for the environment is just an everyday part the process.
Editorial contacts:
Spencer Dalziel
Porter Novelli for HP
+44 207 853 2371
Spencer.dalziel@porternovelli.co.uk
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