At AMD, we’re proud to say we don’t celebrate Earth Day just once a year.  Environmental responsibility is core to AMD’s culture and encompasses everything from our products to our facilities to our employees.   It’s an ongoing commitment we have; it’s something we practice and do, not just something we talk about.

AMD Lone Star Campus in Austin, Texas

It’s been hard to miss the flurry of media coverage that’s been published in the last week leading up to, in celebration of, and in retrospect of Earth Day 2009. It seems each year more and more companies are getting “into the green”, so to speak.

The fact remains that we are proud of many achievements from a sustainability perspective.

We’ve recently introduced several AMD product innovations that help reduce energy use and  increase power efficiencies, including the 45nm Quad-Core AMD Opteron™ EE processor with AMD’s lowest x86 quad-core server power band, the AMD Phenom™ II X4 940 125W processors with AMD Cool’n’Quiet 3.0 technology, and the ATI Mobility Radeon™ HD 4000 series graphics for notebooks. Each of these innovations helps deliver remarkable energy efficiency compared to previous generation of our products. 

From an operational standpoint, AMD also designs our facilities as a global steward. To date in 2009, AMD attained LEED Gold certification for our new Austin, Texas (USA) campus, making it the largest gold certified LEED commercial campus in Texas.  To call out just a couple of the many green elements of this campus, it features 100% native vegetation and one of the largest rainwater collection systems in the world.  And our AMD facility in Suzhou, China’s 2008 was recognized as an Environmentally Friendly Enterprise by the Suzhou Industrial Park Environmental Protection Bureau.  We’re also trying to enable others who are interested in sustainable building efforts to learn more about the experience AMD underwent in building their “Lone Star” campus in Austin. If you’re interested in finding out more, please join us at the upcoming Central Texas Green Building Symposium on May 12 in Austin. Remote participants can tune in to a live broadcast of the event at AMD Unprocessed.

When it comes to being green, no employee is left behind at AMD, as we try to raise awareness about energy conservation, encourage employees to share their ideas, and adopt energy saving behaviors in their daily lives. Some of our employee conservation programs include Go Green, an award winning North American commuter program that has avoided approximately 1.4 million miles of driving and 1.3 million pounds of CO2 emissions since July 2007, and Throw Green, AMD’s cross-site multi-stream recycling and reclaim program. At AMD’s Sunnyvale headquarters, AMD recycled 50% of its total solid waste stream in 2008.

AMD’s Global Climate Protection Plan, published annually since 2001, demonstrates our dedication to reducing our environmental impact. After exceeding our initial climate protection plan goals (ahead of schedule), in 2007 we got more ambitious.  Our greenhouse gas emissions reduction goal is to reduce normalized emissions 33 percent by year-end 2010 relative to the 2006 baseline. By the end of 2008, AMD charted progress toward that goal with a 22 percent reduction from the 2006 baseline. We also set out to reduce normalized energy use 40 percent by year-end 2010 relative to the 2006 baseline. By the end of last year, we had achieved a 27 percent reduction from the 2006 baseline.

AMD’s green efforts aren’t done in isolation. We work with numerous third parties and industry organizations to promote and improve our energy efficiency and energy savings efforts.  We’re also proud to say the USA’s grand-daddy of all groups green – the EPA – has blessed AMD, awarding us a 2008 Climate Protection Award. AMD also made the latest EPA list for the Top 50 Green Power partners in the country for our total renewable power purchases. Other companies on the list may have purchased more raw kWh of green energy, but AMD ranks higher than many in terms of total percentage of green electricity purchased.

For all we’ve accomplished so far, AMD also recognizes that the greening of our company is a never-ending endeavor. And we believe the greenest is yet to come.

Catherine Greenlaw is a public relations manager at AMD. Her postings are her 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 linked sites and no endorsement is implied.