Environment: Embracing Sustainable Practices, Worldwide

Reduce. Reuse. Recycle.
To ensure appropriate stewardship, we implement our environmental sustainability efforts with an awareness of the great variety in local environmental priorities and conditions across the regions in which we operate. We think globally while assessing the unique circumstances and sustainability needs in each area where we do business. While local actions may vary, our core principles of Reduce, Reuse and Renew transcend cultures and regions to help renew and provide for the sustainability of communities worldwide.

Download the 2012 CSC Corporate Responsiblity Report: Environment section. (PDF, 255Kb)

Conserving Resources, Cutting Costs

We implement carefully planned reductions and leverage new technologies and methods to cut costs for ourselves and our clients, while shrinking our carbon footprint.

Energy
This year, we commissioned energy-efficiency assessments of our key data center and office locations around the world, and we have documented nearly $6 million per year in savings opportunities. By harnessing these powerful opportunities, we are implementing identified efficiency improvements and leveraging best practices for our facilities. We are also upgrading the mix of our energy supply. For example, CSC’s UK energy portfolio is currently 50% renewable source and 50% pure green energy. Following negotiations with our utility providers, we increased the grid power supply available at a data center in the UK. Previously, the site relied heavily on self-generated power using fuel oil to meet the data center’s power requirements. The improvement cut Scope 1 emissions at the site by over 4,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) a year, and significantly reduced running costs.

Travel
Through expanded capabilities and broad application of videoconferencing and teleconferencing, we reduced our global business transportation and travel by approximately 20% over the past year. Our nearly 110 in-production high-definition videoconferencing devices support a volume of over 4,500 calls per month, saving millions of dollars in travel miles and associated costs. As a strong supporter of teleworking, we enable many employees to work remotely, which lessens travel to the office and other work sites.

Office Waste
All of our facilities have implemented office-waste reduction and recycling strategies. For example, 73% of CSC’s UK operational waste was diverted from landfills in 2011, exceeding annual local targets. And at our Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) headquarters in Aldershot, UK, we reached a 77% diversion-from-landfill rate and hope to be close to our original 2015 target of zero waste to landfill before the end of FY 2013.

Data Centers
Our data centers are a focus of our energy-reduction efforts because they account for the largest percentage of our energy consumption and business-carbon emissions. In addition to energy assessments, we implemented a variety of energy-saving measures this year, helping to reduce our carbon emissions and manage our operating costs. As a result, we are seeing improvements in our power usage efficiency (PUE) metrics around the world. We have reduced the PUE for data centers in North America by 8% since 2009, resulting in energy savings of approximately $1 million per year at current electrical rates. Additional examples of energy-saving initiatives include the following:

Virtualization, Refresh and Consolidation. Internally CSC increased virtualization from 36.85% to 42.89% over FY 2012. We added 597 virtual servers, while removing 259 physical servers, creating an estimated savings of $467,000 for the year.
Chillers. We retrofitted some data centers with new chiller complexes with variable-frequency drives (VFDs).
Air-Side Economization. A baseline comparison of an air-side economization project commissioned and tested this year at one of our data centers indicates $160,000 in annual savings.
UPS. We replaced legacy UPS systems with new, more efficient ones.
Hot/Cold Aisle Containment. We use hot/cold aisle containment systems in many of our data centers.
Lighting. We installed motion detector lighting to ensure lights are off when there is no activity.
Grounds. We reduced lawn-mowing of grounds at many of our data centers.
Cable Trays. We eliminated much of the under-floor cabling to promote better air flow, using cable trays instead. In one data center, we installed cable trays above the ceiling tiles.
Air Flow. We employ blanking panels in server racks, manage subfloor air flow and use floor tiles in appropriate locations to promote air flow and eliminate “hot spots” in our computer rooms.
Computer Room Temperature. Most of our data centers have raised room temperatures to a range of 72 – 76 degrees Fahrenheit (22 – 24 degrees Celsius)
CRAC Unit Shutdown. In all data centers, we have shut down redundant computer room air conditioning (CRAC) units where possible.

Greening the Fleet
Through a travel program in the UK, we implemented a company car system to encourage employees to opt for vehicles with lower CO2 emissions. This policy has reduced the average CO2 emissions from 136.27 g/km to 127.53 g/km per vehicle as of March 2012, despite the fleet growing from 674 to 766 vehicles. In addition, our UK fleet is outperforming the 2011 UK average emissions figure for new vehicle registrations of 138.1 g/km, and on average already meets both the 2012 and 2015 European legislative emissions targets for new vehicle registrations.

Spring Cleaning for the Digital Age
In Australia, we found that e-waste peripherals, such as laptop batteries, adapters, copper cables and docking stations, were piling up around the offices, running the risk of being thrown into general waste bins. With our zero-tolerance approach to improper disposal of potentially harmful elements, we initiated an “eSpring Clean Week” with our e-waste contractors where extra recycling bins were provided and staff were encouraged to clean up the office. As a result, our e-waste contractor collected and recycled 675 kg of peripheral e-waste — waste and toxic materials that could otherwise have been sent to landfills. This event helped raise awareness of e-waste among staff and triggered an analysis of current processes, positioning us to continue diverting e-waste from landfills in the future.

Improved Reporting, Increased Transparency

We identified the strengths and weaknesses of our reporting processes and programs to increase transparency, engagement and our ability to achieve long-term, sustainable change.

CSC is proud to have submitted a response to the Carbon Disclosure Project for the third consecutive year — our second consecutive year with a global data set. Our 2011 disclosure score was 75, with a performance score of C. This year, we added data for an additional 60 sites and are now reporting in the following 23 countries: Australia, Austria, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, China, the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Germany, India, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Lithuania, Malaysia, Norway, Singapore, South Africa, Sweden, the United Kingdom, the United States and Vietnam.

Global Utility 2011: 192 locations

11.4 million square feet
333,000 tons CO2e
$72 million (USD)
726,000 MWh

Global Utility 2010: 132 locations (baseline year)

10.7 million square feet
316,000 tons CO2e
$68 million (USD)
737,000 MWh

In Australia, we met our CO2 emissions target with a 26% reduction in annual emissions from office energy consumption and flights by the end of CY 2011, based on a 2007 baseline.

Learning by Doing

We engage with our employees and are moving forward to a stronger, more innovative and more sustainable CSC.

Growing Awareness
Our Green Champions Team in Australia organized a pilot workshop at our head office where staff could learn how to set up their own organic garden and get hands-on planting experience. The event received positive feedback, and a national program is being planned in our Australian offices to further share the merits of organic gardening.

Reusing and Recycling E-Waste

We work with leaders in IT asset disposition around the globe to ensure that electronic waste from our operations does not find its way into landfills.

Diverting Retired Assets from the Solid Waste Stream
Our vendor network gives us access to end-to-end IT asset retirement solutions, which include data security and destruction, redeployment, remarketing, lease return, logistics management, legislative compliance, and risk and environmental management. We vet these solutions through our supply chains to ensure that all necessary process and quality accreditations are in place. Through these reseller programs, CSC electronics were remarketed with maximum value and brand protection this year, through a broad spectrum of sales channels and with increasing technological capabilities. In the United States alone, we e-cycled 1.8 million pounds of electronic waste, with a resulting revenue share of $1.9 million.

Innovative Mobility
In Europe, our Baltic employees demonstrated commitment to making their daily routines greener during European Mobility Week in September 2011. The Baltic GreenWay team posted signs and created challenges to promote smarter and more environmentally friendly forms of transportation, including messages to forgo the elevator for the stairs, and rewarding employees who used public transportation to get to work. Employees also highlighted the importance and ease of recycling materials at the office, and encouraged stronger efforts to reduce office waste.

Toward a Greener Workplace
At a variety of CSC offices around the globe, we urged our employees to take another look at their office practices to reduce electricity usage and waste. Security notes were left on computer equipment powered on without use overnight to raise awareness about energy usage, and employees developed quizzes and demonstrations on recycling to illustrate how easy it can be to make daily habits greener.

Conclusion

Going forward, we will continue to raise the bar for our sustainability efforts. By taking steps to measure Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions through a unified framework at the global level, we will consolidate visibility of our operations and ultimately put in place actions to manage and/or adapt to climate change risks. And by investigating a more comprehensive set of global targets, we will work toward adopting other innovative measures over the next 5 to 10 years.