When it comes to technological innovation, ensuring your value chain—from manufacturing to logistics—is good for the planet is no easy feat. Nevertheless, savvy companies know that pursuing sustainability is crucial and HP is no exception. For our second installment of our year-in-the-life series, Fortune spoke with Nancy Powell, manager for sustainability for the UK&I and EMEA markets on how to go green, in spite of the challenges.
Priorities: What’s your big focus for 2026?
Empowering customers with more sustainable choice.
Sustainability is often a set of public targets, which you put on a timeline horizon and then galvanize the business to move towards that. And many businesses, I think, have thought about it very much as their own performance: how do we get from here to that public target? The big movement that we’re part of at the moment is how sustainability solves a problem for the customer.
It’s not just a question of how we bake sustainability into our hardware and software before handing it over, but how we think about it from manufacturing through to delivery, from how they’re using it to how they dispose of it. It’s no longer a side program; it’s about how sustainability is valuable to our customers.
At a very basic level, many of our customers will have their own targets that they’re trying to meet. So, when they look at where that carbon footprint comes from, they’ll look at all the things influencing that, and they’ll see that their tech, hardware and choices are a chunky bit of that pie.
There are also efficiency choices and value choices that they want to make. They’re weighing up performance and cost, but they’re also trying to think about the energy consumption of the hardware, so their bills are going down.
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When we give customers a product, we’re also handing them a packaging problem to solve. If we give them multiple different materials wrapped in multiple different ways, with single-use plastic, that’s all waste streams that they’ve then got to sort out. You have to solve those problems for them. You have to take some of this friction out, both to meet their objectives, but also just to make their lives easier when it comes to thinking about the materials, the hardware, and the practicalities.
Pep talks and preparation: How did you motivate your team at the beginning of the year?
Working in sustainability has never been easy, but things are changing. When I started 25 years ago, you were explaining what it was—you’re definitely not doing that now. In terms of profile and relevance and importance, particularly for the EMEA region, sustainability is now there in procurement requirements, it’s there in contracts.
The demands, however, are as challenging as they’ve always been—and they’re growing. The expectations coming from our customers so that they can meet regulatory data requirements or reporting requirements in their market are growing as well. So, for my team, it’s challenging in the sense that what is brought into that bracket of sustainability is growing in a very practical and meaningful way.
“Data is always going to be the big challenge for sustainability.”
I think when you give people a pep talk, it’s often because you need that pep talk yourself! I’m a very optimistic leader so, in spite of the challenges, from where I’m sitting, there are some exciting things happening and some huge opportunities. In Europe, our customers are extremely demanding for sustainability—as they should be— and I think we can all see huge opportunity there.
Worries: What’s keeping you up at night?
Data is always going to be the big challenge for sustainability. The robustness of data, the cadence with which you can collect it and share it, the methodology, and the issues around convergence within the sector. These are things that cause friction and frustration between businesses. We’re part of a channel community so we collaborate and partner with so many businesses that trying to create convergence between how I measure my product carbon footprint and how you measure yours is perennially difficult.
Trade-offs: What’s one compromise you’ve made this year to reach a more strategic goal?
That is sustainability full stop: trade-offs.
When you’re talking to customers, you need to discuss whether you should consider the product carbon footprint of the device first and foremost? Although, hang on a second, you could have a piece of hardware that’s got way more recycled content in its casings or in the shaft. If we’re only driving down the product carbon footprint, then do we miss the opportunity to have some really innovative new waste streams recycled and incorporated into that?
Magic metrics: What is one number you’re looking for at the end of this month to signal it’s been a success?
My favorite number that I track is the number of customers and partners that I’ve met each quarter.
I do it as a sign of my level of engagement outside the business. Because our vision as a business is to be completely customer-centric. So one of the reasons I measure this is to ask myself: “Are you doing it? Nancy, are you spending enough time being customer-centric?”
I learn most from customers. I drive the most value for HP by spending my time with customers.
Looking at the percentage of my diary, I should be spending nearly 50% of my time with customers and partners. I categorize all my customer and partner engagement in my calendar in purple so if I look and see there’s a good slug of purple in there, I know I’m doing a good job.
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com