Laura Ipsen, senior vice president and general manager of Cisco Smart Grid and co-chair of the Eco Board, explains how Cisco is supporting a global transformation to a low-carbon society.
Laura Ipsen: Cisco's Sustainability Strategy
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Cisco's communications and networking solutions are enabling a fundamental change in the way people interact, bringing individuals together to work, live, play, and learn in new and more sustainable ways.
Our technology promotes environmental sustainability through innovation and collaboration. We work with industry peers and others to develop strategies and utilize information and communication technologies (ICT) to address global challenges like climate change (see Advocacy).
Low-carbon solutions and energy-efficient products are a significant business opportunity for Cisco as our customers work to reduce carbon footprints.
At the same time, we work hard to minimize the environmental impacts of our products and operations.
Our strategy
Our environmental strategy takes a holistic approach, looking at both direct and indirect impacts. We focus on three key areas:- Low-carbon solutions: developing innovative solutions to help Cisco and our customers use less energy and reduce carbon footprints
- Products: making our products more energy and resource-efficient in their design, manufacture, use, and end-of-life
- Operations: improving resource efficiency and changing the way we work
We undertake partnerships with suppliers, industry peers, and other stakeholders to help us implement this strategy. We also work through industry groups to advocate appropriate environmental regulations (see Advocacy).
- Cisco TelePresence facilities introduced by partners in 25 public locations, extending access to virtual face-to-face meetings that reduce travel impacts
- An average of 225,000 virtual meetings per day hosted on our online collaboration tool Cisco WebEx
- One additional site certified to ISO 14001, bringing the total of Cisco sites certified to 26
- 12 percent reduction in Scope 1 and 2 GHG emissions from operations. Scope 3 GHG emissions from air travel were 45 percent lower than the FY06 baseline. Both are in line with our commitment to reduce all Scope 1, 2, and business-air-travel Scope 3 greenhouse gas emissions worldwide by 25 percent absolute by calendar year 2012
- 19.3 million people hours of virtual meetings at Cisco using our collaboration solutions
- 4128 "green pledges" made by employees