Dell sustainability chief: 'We design products we know we'll get back from customers'

David Lerdiscusses how he came to head the tech giant’s sustainability operations, its one-for-one product recycling goal and the explosion in environmental awareness

This article appears in the CRN Sustainability Report, which is accessible here to CRN Essential subscribers.

How did you land the role of VP of corporate sustainability and how integral is it to Dell's operations?

I got my start in product development and we always got a lot of questions from our customers, including governments and NGOs.

A couple of activist groups ran some campaigns because they didn't like the recyclability of our plastics and I'd meet with them because I knew a lot about energy efficiency and plastics and materials - I've got a background in chemistry. So it was natural that I would talk to them and find out their concerns. Then nine years ago Dell asked me to run sustainability.

When I first came into this role, I did a 360 assessment on who cares about sustainability, why they care and where they want to go. That's when we started assessing customer interest. We were looking through RFPs and what customers were asking for, and we built around that.

In 2013, we launched the Dell 2020 Legacy of Good goals, even though Dell had been doing things around sustainability for a long time. In fact, I would say that some of Michael Dell's first designs in 1984 included aspects of design for upgradability, for serviceability, and these very designs lend themselves to design for recyclability.

Putting these 2020 goals out there gave us a way to signal to all our customers, suppliers and engineers where we wanted to go. So we knew every time we built a new revision of a product or a new revision of a process that we'd always be thinking about how we go a little further, and we actually achieved lots of those goals early.

Dell has set a number of lofty goals as part of its 2030 roadmap, including recycling one product for every one bought by a customer. How achievable is this and how do you plan to reach those targets?

We use waste carbon fibre from the aerospace industry to put into our own plastics; it makes them thinner, stronger and lighter, and it's completely recyclable. We now see this as a way we can pull from other industry waste streams and that becomes our raw material.

We make a lot of stuff and we want to be a steward of those products and do some very intentional design. When we design a product we want to design it in a way that we know we're going to get it back from our customer. That's why we set the goal, because if we sell you one, we're going to take the equivalent back and recycle or reuse it.

We've already been doing it over the last eight years but we're going to double down on it and try to increase that. So we think it's doable. It's going to require innovation - we're not there today, but we're on the path.

In your decade in charge of sustainability at one of the world's biggest tech companies, how has awareness or attitude in the industry on the issue changed?

We have seen explosive growth from all our of stakeholders, from our potential employees, our customers - all types of customers - all over the world.

Investors have significantly increased their interest in sustainability because they see it as looking through a different lens, that you're thoughtful and thinking about what future conditions could affect your company. We're seeing a lot more investors now using sustainability ratings as a filter for where they put their money or how they evaluate a stock.

Customers are also being much more progressive in how they're using sustainability in their own purchase selection. They are looking for a trusted partner who is as thoughtful as they are. They also want to make sure the products are being created, built and shipped in a way that's responsible in the long term and can help the customers meet their own goals.