It Ain't Easy Being Green ... but we try

With the resurrection of The Muppets, allow me to pay homage in saying, it ain’t easy being green.

That would be the case each year that Newsweek magazine puts out its Green Rankings, and this year Seagate climbed 102 positions from 170th in 2010 to 68th in 2011. Newsweek’s top rankings went to Seagate customers and recognized leaders in sustainability: IBM and HP were rated Nos. 1 and 2, respectively, while Dell was fifth. Retail customers Office Depot (8), Wal-Mart (52), Best Buy (19) and Staples (17) also performed well in the rankings.

Lower is better

So in a year that Seagate dropped the word “Green” from a Barracuda product brand name, there are good reasons we actually made a significant jump, and continue to be the highest ranked storage component supplier on the list. Why? Because being “green” goes way beyond products and labels.

Newsweek’s Green Rankings focus on the largest publicly traded companies in the U.S. Newsweek partnered with two leading environmental-research organizations, Trucost and Sustainalytics, to compile an overall Green Score for each company. Companies were evaluated on three components: environmental impact, environmental management and environmental disclosure.

So product offering or product names do not even fare in the computation.

Seagate has always understood that all of our products are “green” because we continue to strive to not only reduce their power consumption, but more importantly, reduce the environmental impact that goes into the design, manufacturing, shipping, and disposal of said products. This is standard across all products Seagate offers.

So discontinuing the Barracuda Green drive, admitting that the green label was more marketing than substance, is not a strike against the environment. It’s actually a plus. With “The Power of One”, Seagate aims to consolidate 3 formerly discrete production lines into one offering, and that means less waste – and that my friends is the definition of being green.

My view from inside may be a bit slanted, but it’s just something we’re very proud of here at Seagate.
But we’d like to keep learning and doing more — what green practices do you most want to see your suppliers focusing on?