Honoree: Enterprise – Technology Industry

Company Overview

Dell Technologies is a unique family of businesses that helps organizations and individuals build their digital future and transform how they work, live, and play. The Round Rock, Texas-based company provides customers with broad, innovative technology and a services portfolio spanning from hardware to cloud. Founded in 1984 by Michael Dell in his University of Texas dorm room, Dell Technologies is one of the largest technology companies in the world, with more than 157,000 team members globally. Dell Technologies makes an impact through collaborative partnerships that help reduce e-waste, encourage recycling, repurpose electronic parts, and restore habitat. To date, Dell Technologies serves 16 million people with technology and technical expertise.

Sustainable Business Practices

Advancing sustainability is one of the key ways Dell Technologies believes they can have significant positive change.

The growing need for electronics is creating the fastest growing waste stream in the world. With that in mind, Dell Technologies considers sustainability at every step and assumes responsibility to ensure that their technology is designed, shipped, and manufactured with sustainability at the forefront.

Environmental Stewardship

Dell Technologies’ sustainability programs are embedded into a variety of their business segments, touching individuals in a variety of roles. Beyond sustainability programs, Dell staff also gives back to the community. Since 2014, Dell Technologies’ team members volunteered 5 million hours of service to their communities, and over the last decade, the team members with the help of the Dell matching grants, raised $244 million dollars for worthy causes around the world

Michael Dell, Founder and CEO of Dell, created the foundation of sustainability from the company’s inception. He wanted his products to be easy to service and repair, which meant they were also easier to recycle. He didn’t want to see his name in a landfill, so he established a worldwide technology network. All of those early decisions have enabled Dell to lead the way toward a circular economy that reuses and repurposes their waste into new innovative products. This has ultimately allowed the company to repurpose 100 million pounds of sustainable materials in Dell products since 2014.

Conservation Programs 

E-Waste Recycling

Dell Technologies has cultivated a number of services that provide responsible recycling solutions for consumers and businesses that have enabled them to build a closed-loop supply chain by repurposing e-waste. The Trade-in Swap and Incentive Program between DELL EMC and Teleplan has generated $13 million to date and has kept 303 tons of material out of the waste stream. Dell’s Asset Resale and Recycling Services returned more than 23 million in value back to the customers from asset resale. 

Additionally, in 2004, Dell partnered with Goodwill®, to develop Dell Reconnect, a program providing free drop-off recycling that allows consumers to responsibly recycle any brand of used computer equipment, in any condition, at more than 2,000 participating Goodwill locations. Products resold also enable jobs and tech skills training for disadvantaged members of local communities. 

Thanks to Dell, more than 2 billion pounds of computer electronics have been responsibly recycled since 2007. Looking toward the future, Dell Technologies recently announced new 2030 goals as part of their Progress Made Real Plan. The company has a goal around 1:1 recycling/reuse. For every product a customer buys, Dell will reuse or recycle an equivalent product. Additionally, Dell recycles 100% of packaging and 50% of products will be made from recycled or renewable materials.

Programs like Dell Reconnect and ARR not only responsibly recycle e-waste, but they are the primary sources of recycled plastics. In 2014, Dell was the first in the industry to launch a closed-loop plastics recycling process. To date, more than 39 million pounds of closed-loop plastics have been reused to make new computer parts in more than 125 different products at Dell.  

Dell Campus Pollinator Habitat

Dell Technologies’ international headquarters at the Round Rock, Texas campus occupies approximately 38 acres situated on the I-35 migration corridor. Monarchs rely on habitat waystations along this central flyway as they make their annual pilgrimage to and from Mexico. Dell Technologies employees and partner volunteers collaborated to create monarch habitat in addition to their Workplace Garden, planting milkweeds and other pollinator-friendly native plants, removing invasive species, managing a riparian zone and restored prairie meadow, and enhancing their educational interpretive signage. Dell also seeks to engage their employees in environmental and sustainability efforts happening company-wide through education, volunteerism, and collaboration. Management priorities for the site have been set for the riparian area, walking trail, monarch meadows, and outreach and education. In addition to this, Dell has recently seeded supplemental acreage around their campus with pollinator-friendly plants to further the impact made by their original prairie restoration efforts.

Plant a Tree Program

In 2008, Dell set a goal of planting 1 million trees by 2020. In 2017, they reached their Million Tree Challenge goal – three years ahead of schedule. Through this program, they restored 2,000 acres of land, which is the equivalent of more than 1,500 football fields. Dell continues to support these efforts through their own giving, as well as through their Plant a Tree Program and a newly-launched Plant a Forest program – an initiative to extend donation of trees on behalf of commercial customers.

One recent tree planting project was in the Rio Grande Valley on the Texas/Mexico border, which is home to one of only two ocelot populations in the country. The Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge sits at the center of conservation and recovery efforts for this amazing and once endangered wild cat. In partnership with customers, The Conservation Fund, and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Dell has planted more than 220,000 trees across Texas to restore wildlife habitat and give the ocelot a chance to make a comeback.

Building a Sustainable Future

Dell Technologies believes as the population grows and more people move to cities, the conservation of resources becomes increasingly important – and they are excited about the role that technology will play in the conservation space. Their technologies will allow customers to process huge amounts of data, which will help Texans and the rest of the world make smarter decisions on resources. They believe the amount of data they’ll be able to collect with Dell technologies will supercharge conservation progress. Their technologies will allow them to get “smarter-better”, understand the natural world, and how to run more efficiently.

Texan-Led Conservation

Dell Technologies was created in Michael Dell’s UT freshman dorm room in Austin, Texas in 1984. Dell Technologies considers Austin, the home of their headquarters, as a town with an incredible entrepreneurial spirit, and one that has been an integral part of their company culture since its inception.

View Dell’s Sustainability Report