How 6 top laptop manufacturers are lowering their carbon footprints

Tackling climate change is a team sport, and we all have to be in it together if we want to win. So, not only should we hold companies to high standards as far as mitigating their environmental impact, we should also laud them when they make positive steps in the right direction.

With almost 190 million laptops expected to ship throughout 2024, laptop manufacturers are some of the companies we should be forcing to do better — and fortunately, many of them already are.

From using recycled cardboard for packaging and ocean-bound plastic in laptops themselves, to relying on renewable energy on company property and closed-loop industrial practices. Here’s what the top laptop manufacturers are doing to go green and help save the world.

Dell

Dell has been a household name in laptops for decades, having become one of the top five manufacturers by market share since the late 90s. The company expanded over time and acquired brands (like the gaming-focused Alienware), while also supplying some of the most iconic product lines in the industry (like its XPS line of premium laptops).

As with many modernizing brands, Dell has taken on several eco-driven initiatives that help reduce its carbon footprint: the reduction of non-recycled and non-recyclable materials in laptop construction; improving the repairability of its devices; and making it easier to recycle its products once they’ve reached the ends of their lives.

Dell

Dell incorporates several different sources for its recycled materials, too. Some of its laptops use plastics recycled from post-consumer devices, while others utilize recycled ocean-bound plastic, while still others use recycled steel, magnesium, and cobalt. Recycled materials don’t just reduce their impact on landfills and ocean-dumping, but cut down on the carbon output that goes into producing those materials (since metals and plastics don’t need to be harvested and refined to the same extent).

Dell makes it easy to recycle your laptop as an individual and for businesses to do the same. It’s an incentivized scheme, too, which ensures destruction of sensitive company data and leads to money back on future purchases. Overall, it helps cut down on laptop e-waste.

In the company’s sustainability brochure (PDF), Dell promises that “100 percent of [their] packaging and more than 50 percent of [their] product content will be made from recycled or renewable materials” by 2030.

Lenovo

By sheer volume of PCs and laptops sold, Lenovo has been the biggest computer manufacturer in the world for over a decade — so any eco-friendly initiatives by this company will not only have a huge impact, but could also encourage its competition to do the same.

Like its contemporaries, Lenovo is utilizing more and more recycled materials in its laptop designs, including ocean-bound plastic, closed-loop post-consumer plastics, and recycled metals. Its goals aren’t quite as ambitious as Dell’s, but in Lenovo’s 2024 Sustainability Report (PDF), it has pledged to have 100% of its products contain some post-consumer recycled materials by 2025. It claims around 14.6 million net pounds of plastics containing recycled content were used in 2023.

Lenovo

Lenovo also offers a “reduced carbon transport” service to business customers. They can also pay for sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) credits, which helps offset the CO2 output by transporting the laptops and other devices to the customer. While that does rely on customers paying for the reduced carbon transport option, Lenovo is investing in that itself, too.

As part of its net-zero-by-2050 commitment, Lenovo is utilizing more rail and sea freight as lower-carbon shipping options, as well as pushing for the use of SAF in Europe and South America. It also has targets to reduce transport costs in its repairs, with a pledge that by 2026 over 84 percent of all repairs of Lenovo products will take place at a repair shop, without the need to ship it to a service center.

HP

HP has one of the most ambitious green goals for its business, aiming to achieve net-zero emissions throughout its entire value chain by 2040 — that’s a good 10 years ahead of most of its competitors.

In its 2023 sustainability report (PDF), HP claimed to have already reached a 27 percent reduction since 2019, with over 184,000 tons of CO2-equivalent emissions avoided in 2023 alone through its partnerships and energy efficiency programs.

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The company is also innovating on its products, making them smaller and leaner with less wasted materials, all while using more and more recycled materials in their construction. Its newest print cartridges are 30 percent smaller while also using 35 percent recycled content. Some of its laptops, like the EliteBook 1040, are made from over 90 percent recycled magnesium and have 50 percent recycled plastics in its keycaps. Since 2019, HP claims to have used over a billion pounds of recycled plastics in its devices. Pretty impressive, if you ask me.

HP’s certified refurbished systems provide cheaper and more environmentally friendly pathways for companies looking to upgrade their computer systems, too. The HP Device Life Extension program (PDF) offers corporations the option to have their devices cleaned and updated with newer and faster components, extending the life of existing hardware and reducing the need to buy entirely new systems.

HP is also working to eliminate single-use plastics in its packaging, having reached a 62 percent reduction between 2018 and 2023, on track to reach 75 percent by 2025. That should coincide with a complete removal of all landfill waste solutions for HP operations that same year.

Asus

Asus offers tons of in-depth data on its carbon footprint reduction initiatives, so if you want to really dig into the numbers on what it’s done and what it’s doing, there’s loads to chew on. Want to see an exact breakdown of its CO2 emissions? It’s here. A breakdown of how it audits the recycling companies it uses for end-of-life devices? That’s here.

As for its more digestible data points, Asus claims that over 11,600 tons of CO2 have been reduced by its use of recycled materials in its products since 2017. This includes ocean-bound plastics, post-consumer plastics, and post-industrial recycled magnesium and aluminum.

Joachim Pressl / Unsplash

The company has also managed to use 90 percent recyclable materials in its laptop packaging, while also prioritizing lighter packaging to help cut back on transport costs and fuel usage.

Some of Asus’ goals for 2025 include: reaching 100 percent recyclable materials in its laptop packaging; reaching a 20 percent recycling rate for all Asus products; and expanding its use of responsibly sourced materials like cobalt to 100 percent. By 2030, Asus also plans to reduce company-wide global carbon emissions by 50 percent and reach 100 percent renewable energy usage in all Taiwan-based operations.

Apple

Apple stands among these companies taking aggressive action to reduce their carbon footprints. In its 2024 sustainability report (PDF), Apple claims a 55 percent reduction in overall emissions since 2015, and that doesn’t include carbon credits either. It’s all part of Apple’s ongoing drive to reduce the company’s global emissions to carbon neutrality by 2030 — by far the most ambitious of all emissions goals on this list.

On the road to that lofty goal, Apple has: reduced emissions from transporting its products by 20 percent since 2022; cut back the energy use of its product ranges by as much as 70 percent since 2008; and increased its stock of refurbished devices to nearly 13 million globally.

In 2023, Apple increased the quantity of recycled materials in its products, now using 100 percent recycled cobalt in the Apple Watch and iPhone batteries, as well as 25 percent recycled gold across all product lines. It also now uses 100 percent recycled aluminum in the chassis of its Mac, MacBook, and iPad lines.