Intel welcomes the green spotlight
Corporate social responsibility is competitive advantage.
On Monday, Intel featured its big announcement about its enormous purchase of renewable energy credits on its slick new environment site on Intel.com. These initiatives champion new standards in Fortune scale renewable power use, as well as corporate communication, by adding detailed information about the company’s commitments to reduce the impacts of its products and activities on the environment. Meanwhile, many companies have yet to feature corporate social responsibility (CSR) information, in a prominent way, on their websites.
With 79% of us (consumers) seeking out information about companies’ social responsibility, using the internet as our primary resource, the ways in which companies communicate this information is a new arena of competitive advantage for 21st century business. Many of us are looking for CSR and environmental impact-related information first when we arrive at companies’ websites, and this information is now translating to real desire to work for, invest in, and buy from pioneering companies.
Therefore, the amount of “real estate” on a company’s website dedicated to CSR and environmental impact-related information now not only translates to its wedding vows, written to society and the environment, but also the company’s competitive advantage in selling products and attracting new employees and investors’ money. If I can’t find the information on the company’s main home page, I generally conclude that it isn’t important to the company, and the company is leaving money on the table, as a result. Intel passed the test this week by promoting its environment site prominently on its home page.
Highlights from Intel’s environment site:
- The big announcement: Intel has purchased renewable energy credits totaling 1.3 billion kw hours, equal to the eliminating the CO2 output of 185,000 cars, and 46% of its total electricity usage. According the EPA, this puts Intel at the top of its list of green power purchasers nationwide.
- Both energy efficiency and performance are driving Intel’s product design. Intel’s products have become 20% more efficient over the last three years. They are using less packaging, and are now 100% lead free (as companies such as Nintendo defend against Greenpeace’s attack on toxic consumer electronics, which pushed Apple start designing greener last year). Its data center products (e.g. the “server farms” used to power your gmail account, Google’s search, your purchases on Amazon, and the rest of the internet) are now also designed to conserve energy.
- Intel operates green. Its “ingenious” recycling program enables 70% of all waste to be recycled, and its new facility in Isreal is LEED certified, the green stamp of approval for buildings that are designed to use less energy. Its Arizona facility will seek review for LEED certification as well.
- Intel aims to cut the energy consumption of computers by 50%, as a member of the Climate Savers initiative.
Intel’s new environment site makes understanding its achievements in and goals for its impacts on the environment easy to understand, and the site is beautifully designed. In a sense, the site acts as an intuitive, easy on the eyes sitemap for the wealth of information that exists on Intel.com about the company’s relationship with the environment.
When it comes to consumers, does ambiguity breed ignorance?
I’m often approached by job seekers in search of a great company that will reward their hard work with the knowledge that they are contributing to making our world better. They complain that information on corporate websites is just “too vague.” The language and content is the same safe, scripted language that we hear from CEOs and read in press releases. So they turn to Google and Wikipedia, in search of unbiased information. Unfortunately, Wikipedia tends to host haphazardly collected information about companies in which company representatives are forbidden from contributing. A Google search is great if you have time to dig through countless search results to piece together the whole story from dozens of news articles, blog posts, and independent sites. As a result, consumers and companies lose. Consumers give up as companies assume that consumers just don’t care or the data is just “over their heads.”
I must say that I’m reassured by knowing that the launch of Intel’s environment site is the first step for the company, and that it is seeking out opportunities to present its CSR information in way that is useful and meaningful to consumers. Plus, the company really is miles ahead of the pack, when it comes to the great strides it has made in minimizing its impacts on the environment. This week, it passed the first test, by telling its story in a beautiful way on its site and buried the competition by neutralizing almost half of its US carbon emissions.
Check out these other Environment sites from other Fortune 100 companies:
- Wal-Mart Stores
- Ford Motor Company
- Dell
- Chevron
- GE
- Citigroup
- Bank of America
- JP Morgan Chase (this is pretty sad)
- Verizon
- HP
- IBM
- Valero Energy
- Home Depot
- Morgan Stanley
- Merrill Lynch
- Goldman Sachs Group
- Proctor and Gamble
- Kroger (green report pdf)
- AT&T
- Target
- Johnson and Johnson
- Dow Chemical
- Sears
- Pfizer
- Wells Fargo
- UPS
- Lowe’s
- Motorola
- Safeway
- Walt Disney
- PepsiCo
- FedEx
- Cisco Systems
- Coca Cola Company
You can also read more about Intel’s announcement on its carbon offset purchase on the CSR @ Intel blog.
Disclaimer: I value your trust in the objectivity of my writing. Please note that our company, BIG Inc., has relationships with and is in discussions with Intel about its CSR communications. BIG played no part, however, in the launch of its new environment site. We just think it’s cool.
February 3rd, 2008 at 11:30 pm
Finally, a corporation that seems serious about making a deep-rooted and authentic commitment to sustainability that reflects thought, creativity, and integrity. It’s a far cry from the greenwashing that seems, sadly, to be painting the CSR facades of many companies today. Intel’s promise that “the environment informs and drives our business” is exactly the kind of corporate model that could effect major positive change in this world. Now, it’s our job as consumers to reinforce this behavior by supporting companies that are willing to embrace long-term visions for the greater good of people and the planet.
February 5th, 2008 at 10:12 pm
As a former Intel employee, its nice to see that Intel is now (finally) jumping on the bandwagon (after Google down the street has been stealing the “green” show since their IPO). I certainly hope that for a company with such a large ecological footprint as Intel, that it’s actions to purchase these offsets will move others in the space to do the same. As for your comment on CSR and visibility, Intel does not talk about its social responsibility on its homepage, other than showing its latest news thread (though this may just be a creative issue with updating the look and feel of a website to include CSR-hope that’s the case). I also feel that many of the companies on your list can do a better job of relaying this information in a more “alive” fashion. Most of the information on these sites seem “stale” or boring… I’m sure there are really creative people who can come up with nice real-time dashboards that show how much energy Intel is reducing, carbon eliminating, hungry mouths feeding, Kwatts generating, gallons of chemicals recycling, etc., etc. I also appreciate their blog for it’s a great venue for a more public discourse.
A healthy motto in Corporate responsibility seems to be that we are all trying to do better and Intel is certainly doing that and we should applaud them. We as consumers just need as much visibility and transparency so that we can choose for ourselves who among all the runners in any given race we are willing to support, either those in front or those trailing….