Los Angeles, California, United States —
First of all, I would like to thank the chairman for giving me the opportunity to speak here.
My name is Kevin May. I am from China and I work for Greenpeace. I have been campaigning for clean electronic products, and have spent a lot of time at the electronic waste yards and I would like to share with you the personal experience at those yards that I have.
Over the last few years we have been asking all electronics corporations like HP to take responsibility for the full life cycle of their products.
Specifically, we ask all of them to phase out toxic substances in their products. Last year I was personally involved in frequent communications with HP in Beijing and also at your European headquarters in Geneva.
In HP’s new “Global Citizenship Report” you announced some very positive steps about its environmental policy committing the company to phase out certain hazardous substances such as PVC plastics and brominated flame retardants (BFRs) from your products.
Greenpeace applauds this first step taken by HP and we are addressing you as shareholders to help make sure HP follows through on this commitment to eliminate these hazardous chemicals and ultimately all hazardous chemicals from its products so that no harm is caused to the environment or human health.
However, we’re concerned that HP’s commitment contains some conditions that could cause your proposed timeline to slip. We therefore recommend that you make public regular progress reports at least every 6 months on the status of meeting your deadlines.
The HP’s commitment is not the first. Other electronic companies like LGE, Motorola, Nokia, Samsung, Sony and Sony Ericsson, have made similar commitments earlier.
We believe that this is the right direction for HP. But as a leader in the market globally and a key player in the market in China where I come from and where we are campaigning, we urge HP to continue its leadership role and you as the shareholders will make sure these commitments are fully implemented.
This is because e-waste is still a very urgent threat to the environment and people’s health, in particular those in developing countries like China, where much of the e-waste comes from countries, like the US.
In China, most e-waste is dumped at a place, called Guiyu which is a small town in the southern coastal region of china, about 300 miles away from Hong Kong. A few decades ago it used to be an agricultural region, uncontaminated by toxic industry. But now the town is heavily polluted. Cathode ray tubes, toner cartridges and circuit boards are dumped along riverbanks, open fields and even irrigation ditches. Open burning of wires and cables is also commonly practiced on the outskirts of the town, producing black plumes of smoke. In fact, the whole town is enveloped in an acrid smell and black smoke. The major rivers there have all become blackened. Local residents actually have to buy water from other towns, instead of drinking it from local taps and wells.
Every hour of every day poorly paid workers handle dangerous e-waste without any protective equipment. They use primitive tools such as hammers and chisels to dismantle these hazardous wastes. Worse still, a lot of them are women and small children, who have very little knowledge about the toxicity of these wastes.
One of the most horrendous things I saw in the Guiyu dismantling yards was children playing with e-waste. Tragically these wastes are often the only toys they have. For example, one child of a migrant worker family was playing with an HP cartridge. His face was covered with your toner. He was only 3 years old!
A recent study by a local medical university (the Shantou University) showed that local children have high levels of lead in their blood.
So, if HP is to be the leader in the industry, not only in terms of sales, but also in its efforts to protect the environment and the health of these children, it needs to do more: HP needs to green itself and lead the rest of the industry as soon as possible and only deviate by adding to or exceeding its goals rather than postponing any.
Thank you again for allowing us the time to address you and we are happy to answer any question now or later.
