In 2017, Peter Scott-Morgan, a robotics scientist in Torquay, England, was given startling news—he had only two years to live.
Diagnosed with motor neuron disease, an incurable affliction in which muscles deteriorate to the point of paralysis, Scott-Morgan made a life-changing action. Drawing on decades of experience in robotics, he used technology to devise ways to keep his vital functions going; he also came up with an ingenious method to continue communicating with people once he lost the ability to speak, recording 20,000 different words so that he could string together sentences in his own voice. Now, four years later, Scott-Morgan is partnering with Lenovo, the global technology company, to use artificial intelligence to develop assistive-technology solutions for people with challenging conditions everywhere. “I applied a lifetime of research to rewrite my own future,” says Scott-Morgan, who is still working and thriving today. “But far more important, I now have the chance to rewrite the future for millions—and eventually billions.” With “leaders like DXC Technology and Lenovo, I find the once dark future incredibly bright.”
Creating a smarter world is a core mission for Lenovo, a technology services and solutions company with over 63,000 employees in more than 66 countries that is innovating green, inclusive, and responsible measures for itself and its customers. Today, corporations are pledging to improve environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG), commitments that were once optional but are increasingly becoming mandatory. Recently, for instance, the United States Securities and Exchange Commission moved closer to requiring carbon disclosure, and corporations may soon need to more precisely track and mitigate their footprints along their entire supply chains. But implementing these changes is easier said than done. Companies have become “much more aware of how vulnerable they are to ESG-related issues,” states a recent report by McKinsey & Company. “Accounting disclosures that are material, consistent, and reliable can help reassure shareholders … but many of these characteristics have been lacking in typical sustainability-reporting processes.”
For Lenovo, tracking, quantifying, and improving ESG has been a top goal for years, both internally and for its customers. Recipient of the 2021 BDO ESG Award for excellence in reporting measures, Lenovo recently announced new commitments to obtain 90 percent of its electricity from renewable sources, remove one million tons of greenhouse gas emissions from its supply chain, and continue increasing accessibility for all. Based in Asia with offices around the world, Lenovo draws on its global diversity to innovate ESG solutions internally and, if they prove successful, roll them out to clients.
Adhering to the Science Based Targets initiative—a partnership between companies and institutions like the United Nations Global Compact—Lenovo is using a data-backed framework to create ESG solutions at a worldwide scale, resulting in innovations that can lead to groundbreaking change for consumers and enterprise customers alike. “Lenovo is helping to set the standard globally for ESG,” says senior vice president and chief legal officer Laura Quatela, who oversees the company’s corporate-responsibility measures. “In addition to being a matter of good citizenship, ESG solutions are creating revenue-generating opportunities for our enterprise partners—innovations that ensure greener, more accessible technology for all.”
Setting Sustainability Goals on a Global Scale
Most companies have a stated commitment to improving their environmental footprint, but measuring the impact of mitigation efforts can be difficult. For instance, Scope 3 emissions—which come from a company’s broader supply chain, rather than from the company itself—can represent up to 90 percent of overall carbon footprint. For Lenovo, reducing emissions throughout its entire supply chain is a priority, and now the company is raising the bar by making a commitment to cutting Scope 1 and 2 emissions in half by 2030 while decreasing emissions intensity from products, suppliers, and transportation by 25 percent.
Lenovo accomplishes goals like this through constant innovation. One of the key technologies enabling the company to achieve emissions reductions, for instance, is Lenovo Neptune liquid-cooling technology. High-performance computing in data centers creates a lot of heat, causing companies to spend money and drive up their energy footprint in order to cool them. With Neptune technology (which uses cold plates to transfer heat from electronics to liquid), companies can reduce energy consumption and increase efficiency by over 50 percent—enabling them to save money and reduce environmental impact. “The energy savings with Neptune are so substantial that our customers are actually giving excess power back to their providers,” Quatela says. “It’s been very popular and just makes sense—streamlining the solution within the product itself.”
Innovating to Reduce Waste at Every Step
In 2020, online shopping increased more than 32 percent to reach $791 billion, an all-time high that is still growing—and creating unprecedented amounts of waste in the form of discarded shipping materials. Currently, the United States generates more plastic waste than any country in the world and recycles less than 10 percent of it. Yet the shift to online shopping (and accompanying rise of single-use plastics) is also prompting innovation. Lenovo is improving the efficiency of its packaging for personal computers and other products, using less material and integrating sustainable materials like bamboo and sugarcane.
Lenovo is also transforming the products themselves, assuring that by 2025, every PC it makes will contain postconsumer recycled material and 75 percent of the parts replaced by its service centers will be repaired for future use. “All these initiatives will contribute to the reuse of 800 million pounds of end-of-life devices per year,” Quatela says. “It’s so important to contribute to the circular economy, and these tweaks and improvements add up to a really big footprint reduction.”
Lenovo has already helped the consumer electronics industry become greener with the invention of a low-temperature soldering process, decreasing PC-manufacturing emissions by 35 percent and increasing product reliability. Lenovo created the process in 2016 and, as of July 2021, has shipped 41.1 million PCs, for 8.2 billion tons in CO2 savings. After unveiling the process, Lenovo shared it with other manufacturers to ensure that the benefits propagated as far as possible.
Enhancing Accessibility for All
Access to the internet is crucial for everyone everywhere in the world, particularly students and those in the health care industry—and Lenovo is working daily to close the digital divide. Since January 2020, the Lenovo Foundation has donated $15 million in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, more than 80 percent of that to help students access remote education. In addition, the company helped equip pop-up hospitals in Wuhan, China, within days of the outbreak, using its health care expertise to enhance treatment and offer touchless technology to enable greater sanitation and communication.
Ultimately, Lenovo wants to ensure that its technologies can be used by everyone. Its work with Peter Scott-Morgan will include self-driving wheelchairs and lifelike avatars that preserve aspects of the user’s personalities. In addition, Lenovo has a Product Diversity Office that tests each item to confirm that all people can use it. “We say smarter technology for all and we mean it,” Quatela says. “And that means a deep dive on each product and service to assure they are accessible to all constituents across the globe.”
Lenovo’s commitments to improving the climate and ensuring accessibility on a global scale are creating ripple effects for customers and people everywhere by helping build a greener world. “Looking ahead, we’re doubling our investment in innovation over the next three years, including how our services can enhance ESG in new ways,” Quatela says. “By measuring our actions, we can continue to address climate change, from our suppliers to our partners and customers—using one candle to light many for a brighter future.”
