Nigel Dessau » Corporate Responsibility

Walking the “Green” Walk

Nigel Dessau — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 15:05:26 +0000

There is a big difference between saying and doing. All too often in business (or marketing) you’ll hear promises and claims that will unfortunately never be realized. And this trend is not restricted to outrageous product claims; it can extend to how a corporation acts.

At AMD we take our pledges to our stakeholders seriously, and this includes our constant focus on being a good corporate citizen.

Earlier this year I blogged about some of the ways AMDers all over the globe are helping make good on that pledge. Today, AMD released two reports that provide additional detail about our ongoing efforts to minimize our corporate footprint. Better yet, they show concrete movement against our benchmarks.

The 2008 Corporate Responsibility Report provides detail on our efforts in support of environmental protection, corporate governance and social responsibility. The Global Climate Protection Plan, meanwhile, outlines AMD’s strategy and goals for global climate protection and the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions.

In addition to receiving a Climate Protection Award from the EPA and achieving LEED Gold certification for our Austin, Texas “Lone Star” campus, AMD is also on track to achieve our EPA Climate Leaders goal of reducing normalized emissionsby 33 percent by the end of 2010.

We’ve also made great progress in enhancing the communities where AMD does business with efforts like the Green Power Group California Affiliates or the AMD North American Go Green commuter program that eliminated an estimated 1,027,000 miles of driving, conserved approximately 50,000 gallons of gasoline and avoided approximately 430,000 kg of CO2 equivalent emissions in 2008.

And as a global company, our efforts are worldwide.

Programs implemented at AMD’s Suzhou facilities, for example, have reduced power consumption by approximately 4,655 Megawatt-hours (MWH), enough energy to power more than 2,000 Chinese households for a year based on a projected average annual energy consumption of approximately 1,800 kWh per household. Similar efforts at AMD’s Markham, Ontario data center replaced 1,152 servers with 312 servers using new energy efficient Quad-Core AMD Opteron™ processors, resulting in calculated annual energy savings of more than 1,750 MWH.

I encourage you to bookmark AMD’s corporate responsibility page for updates or stop by our page on social responsibility networking site JustMeans.com to share your opinion or engage in conversations in a place where business and social responsibility meet.

Nigel Dessau is senior vice president and chief marketing officer at AMD. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such links sites and no endorsement is implied.

Goal! Goal! Goal!

Nigel Dessau — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 07:40:00 +0000

As I blogged last week, AMD and community have been synonymous throughout our 40-year history, in good times and bad. While we can’t afford every ‘grand gesture,’ we think it’s vital to stay connected to the communities where we work, live and play. Our long history of community involvement has been primarily focused on supporting math and science education, but also extends to activities that promote well-being and overall quality of life.

To that end, today we announced our community partnership with the Austin Aztex soccer team. The only professional soccer franchise in Austin, the Aztex are part of 11 teams that will play in the United Soccer League, with 15 home games scheduled at Austin’s Nelson field starting April 18. As you may already know, soccer (or ‘football’ as I call it) is the most popular sport in the world and the fastest growing sport in the U.S. In fact, 35,000 kids and more than 10,000 adults play soccer in Central Texas alone.

This community partnership with Aztex represents a new, low-cost approach to a community involvement effort that, if successful, may be repeated at other AMD sites. With the help of AMD’s community partnership, the Aztex will support the Austin Independent School District (AISD) in their Health Zone Fitness program, which is designed to encourage students to understand the importance of health and fitness in their daily lives. So this also helps us extend our decades-long support for AISD, in which we’ve provided AMD processor-based computers to schools, mentored students with volunteer engineers and contributed to the tax base.

One more thing: I received a wonderful piece of mail the other day from what I believe is the world’s most valuable sports franchise. Impressively, it included a shirt with our logo on it. I thought you would like to see it ─ with apologies to City and Liverpool fans (for Americans: this would be like showing a Yankees shirt to a Red Sox fan).

Doing the Right Thing

Nigel Dessau — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 08:45:00 +0000

I typically blog about industry trends, AMD products or perhaps to clarify something I believe our competitors have muddled.

But today I’d like to turn my attention – and hopefully yours as well – to something a bit different. Today I’d like to celebrate AMD for being a company that, at its core, represents corporate responsibility at its best. This isn’t a boast ─ this is about our culture, about who we are and how we act.

As AMD employees across the globe can tell you, doing the right thing as a neighbor is something we take seriously. AMD has been investing back into the communities where we do business for more than twenty-five years. From planting mangrove trees in Malaysia to donating funds generated from an in-house flea market to the China Red Cross, AMDers take an active role in the communities where we work and live.

One way we do this is by investing in math and science education through programs like AMD Changing the Game. Another is through our Global Climate Protection Plan, now in its eighth year (which in itself is a feat), which is widely considered a model in the industry ─ none other than the U.S. EPA honored AMD with its 2008 Global Climate Protection Award. Last month our Lone Star campus in Austin was awarded LEED Gold Certification, the largest commercial building in Texas to receive this significant “green building” designation.

And most recently, AMD was, for the second year in a row, recognized as one of the Global 100 Most Sustainable Companies, which measures against, “social, environmental and strategic governance issues.” Clearly, we’re doing something right.

We’re not proud of this recognition because it makes us feel good (which it does!). We’re proud of this because it recognizes not only AMD, but the importance of doing the right thing.

Much of this is owed to the work of a core team whose efforts are focused at least in part on ensuring we remain true to this important aspect of our mission as a corporation. But this recognition extends beyond that dedicated group and is something that all AMD employees should, and rightly do, take pride in. In times good and bad, this is a course that we continue to steer.

So, the next time you see an AMD employee (whether you happen to be one or not), please give her or him a hearty pat on the back and a heartfelt “thank you!”

It’s the right thing to do.