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IBM established its product design for the environment (DfE) program in 1991 to bring additional focus to the corporate environmental policy objectives on product environmental design and performance. Throughout the 1990s and continuing through today, IBM has introduced many industry-leading practices in design for the environment, product environmental metrics and product recycling. The company's DfE program is incorporated into IBM's worldwide Environmental Management System (EMS) which is certified to the ISO 14001 EMS standard.
The DfE program provides IBM's business organizations with direction and goals, infrastructure, tools and expertise to apply environmental life cycle considerations to IBM's products, from product concept through product end-of-life management. The objectives of IBM's DfE program include:
- Develop products that are durable, and with consideration for their ability to be repaired, upgraded, refurbished, or remanufactured to extend product life.
- Develop products with consideration for their reuse, dismantle-ability, recyclability and recoverability at the end of product life.
- Develop products that can safely be disposed of at the end of product life, including the ability to easily remove hazardous components and assemblies prior to scrapping and disposal.
- Develop and manufacture products that use recycled or renewable materials where they are technically and economically justifiable.
- Develop products that are increasingly energy efficient.
- Develop products that minimize resource use and environmental impacts through selection of environmentally preferred materials and finishes.
These objectives are implemented through internal standards, product specifications, and other requirements in IBM's offering management process. Product environmental attributes such as energy efficiency, materials content, chemical emissions testing, design for recycling, end-of-life management plans, and packaging data must be documented and reviewed in IBM's Product Environmental Profile tool at various check points during the development process.
Environmental design requirements are communicated and verified with suppliers through the following tools: Engineering Specification 46G3772: Baseline Environmental Requirements for Supplier Deliverables to IBM, and the Product Content Declaration for IBM Suppliers.
The IBM Engineering Specification (ES 46G3772) establishes the baseline environmental requirements for supplier deliverables to IBM. Other IBM specifications, contracts or procurement documents may contain additional environmental requirements for suppliers. ES 46G3772 contains restrictions on materials in products and on certain chemicals used in manufacturing. It also requires suppliers to disclose information about the content of certain materials in their products. In addition, the specification includes requirements for batteries, marking of plastic parts, and other product labeling requirements. Questions about this specification should be referred to your IBM Procurement representative.
IBM has robust processes and state-of-the-art tools to help ensure our continued compliance with applicable environmental laws and regulations worldwide. Design and compliance controls, including a specification for Baseline Environmental Requirements for Supplier Deliverables to IBM, a Product Content Declaration for IBM Suppliers (PCD) and compliance assessment protocols, are managed by an interdisciplinary team with representatives from IBM organizations that design, manufacture, procure, deliver and service our product offerings. The team's activities are coordinated by IBM's Center of Excellence for Product Environmental Compliance.
Frequent verification of product data is required to maintain compliance of parts and products relative to both IBM's product environmental requirements and the latest regulatory requirements. IBM conducts quality audits of PCDs to drive improvements in the content of the declarations and the supporting administrative processes. Improvements in data management regarding the materials contained in IBM's products ensure that IBM's technical documentation for product hardware meets the quality requirements described within European Norm 50581: "Technical documentation for the assessment of electrical and electronic products with respect to the restriction of hazardous substances." Going forward and in line with the five year transition period, IBM will migrate to the new European Committee for Electrotechnical Standardization (CENELEC) International Standard EN IEC 63000:2018.
Suppliers of materials, parts and products to IBM must provide information to verify the compliance of their products to IBM's environmental requirements. The Product Content Declaration for IBM Suppliers below can be used to document the environmental data necessary to establish compliance of procured materials, parts and products to IBM Engineering Specification 46G3772: Baseline Environmental Requirements for Supplier Deliverables to IBM.
At IBM, we take a precautionary approach in selecting materials that we use in our products and processes, endeavoring to select materials that are safe for their intended use and that have the least impact on the environment. As a result, IBM has proactively prohibited or restricted the use of many hazardous substances in our products and processes well in advance of potential regulatory actions. For more information, please see:
Product energy efficiency was formalized as one of the company's corporate objectives when IBM established its product design for the environment program in 1991. Through the collaboration of IBM Research and our product development teams, we have combined hardware and software technologies to improve the energy efficiency of IT equipment and in turn, data centers.
For more than two decades, we have maintained a goal to improve the computing power delivered for each kilowatt-hour of electricity consumed for new server products as compared to equivalent, previous-generation products with a valid upgrade path.
As an important part of our comprehensive portfolio of sustainability solutions, IBM z16™ and IBM LinuxONE 4 systems continue to be developed with consideration of their environmental impacts. In 2023, we introduced the IBM z16 single frame and IBM LinuxONE Rockhopper 4, both with new rack mount options, designed to deliver strong sustainability benefits when moving workloads from x86 servers.
Like their multi-frame predecessors, the IBM z16 single frame and IBM LinuxONE Rockhopper 4 utilize the dual-chip IBM Telum® processor. IBM Telum contains two separate processor chips acting as one through a high-speed communications bus, for a performance increase. The largest IBM z16 single frame provides approximately 14% more IBM z/OS® capacity than the largest IBM z15® T02 (both with 6 configurable processors).1 However, when compared to the immediate previous generation systems, while the re-architecture of the chip and the feature size reduction increased performance, they also contributed to a decrease in compute power per kilowatt delivered of 11% in an IBM z16 single frame with 6 configurable processors and 5% in an IBM LinuxONE Rockhopper 4 with 68 configurable processors.2
Consolidating Linux workloads on an IBM z16 single frame or IBM LinuxONE Rockhopper 4 instead of running them on compared x86 servers with similar conditions and location can reduce energy consumption by 75% and space by 67%.3 This can have the associated benefit of reducing the amount of cooling required in data centers and potentially alleviating physical IT growth so that clients that are constrained for space can defer or avoid expanding or building new data centers.
IBM continues to utilize innovations in semiconductor, hard drive/storage system and networking technologies to improve server and storage system performance for each unit of power consumed by the equipment.
The company also continues to certify products to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's ENERGY STAR® program.
1Based on internal measurements. Results may vary by customer based on individual workload, configuration and software levels. For capacity sizing for your systems, use the IBM zPCR Capacity Planning tool and refer to the IBM Z® Large Systems Performance Reference (LSPR) website.
2System capacity based on data available at the IBM Z LSPR website. Power consumption published in the IBM 8562 Installation Manual for Physical Planning and the IBM 3932 Installation Manual for Physical Planning. Single-thread-based MIPS are used. For IBM Z, the performance is LSPR Data (Average RNI Based) (GCP-IBM Z) for the maximum number of customer general purpose cores. For IBM LinuxONE, the performance is LSPR Data (Low RNI Based) (IFL-LinuxONE) for the maximum number of customer IFL cores. All the systems are externally air cooled. Calculations use worst-case power conditions with the maximum system power configuration at the maximum utilization and for the system environment driven maximum power condition. Results may vary.
3Compared IBM Machine Type 3932 Max 68 model consisting of 2CPC drawers and an IO drawer to support network and external storage with 68 IFLs and 7 TB of memory in 1 frame versus compared 36 x86 servers (2 Skylake Xeon Gold Chips, 40 Cores) with a total of 1440 cores. IBM Machine Type 3932 Max 68 model power consumption was measured on systems and confirmed using the IBM Power estimator for the IBM Machine Type 3932 Max 68 model configuration. x86 power values were based on Feb. 2023 IDC QPI power values and reduced to 55% based on measurements of x86 servers by IBM and observed values in the field. The x86 server compared to uses approximately .6083 kWh, 55% of IDC QPI system watts value. Savings assumes the Worldwide Data Center Power Utilization Effectiveness (PUE) factor of 1.55 to calculate the additional power needed for cooling. PUE is based on Uptime Institute 2022 Global Data Center Survey (link resides outside ibm.com). x86 system space calculations require 3 racks. Results may vary based on client-specific usage and location.
IBM has a long history with the U.S. EPA's ENERGY STAR program. ENERGY STAR is a voluntary program which sets energy efficiency and labeling requirements for different product types to identify and promote energy-efficient products.
IBM became a charter member of the EPA's ENERGY STAR Computer Program in 1992 and helped define criteria for computers and monitors. In March 2001, IBM became the first company to win an ENERGY STAR Excellence in Corporate Commitment Award recognizing IBM's overall commitment and contributions to energy conservation and efficiency across the company's operations and in the design of its products.
The company continues to certify eligible products to its criteria. In 2023, IBM had 9 enterprise Power9® and Power10 servers and 6 storage products certified to ENERGY STAR.
For a list of IBM's ENERGY STAR certified servers and storage products, please visit:
For information on how to access the temperature and power use data on IBM's POWER® processor-based servers, please visit:
IBM actively assists in the development of external product energy efficiency standards. The company's engineers are working with industry peers and technical associations to support the development of harmonized worldwide energy efficiency standards for server and storage products, such as:
- Supporting the ENERGY STAR program and other regulatory programs to assist in the development of new criteria for certifying server and storage products.
- Performing extensive evaluations of SERT test data and other industry metrics in support of creating a single metric that can be used to effectively assess the energy efficiency of server products, with the goal of driving a reduction in server power required to deliver a given workload.
- Working in collaboration with The Green Grid, the Information Technology Industry Council and its China affiliate, USITO, and DIGITALEUROPE to evaluate SERT and Storage Networking Industry Association Emerald Power Efficiency Measurement Specification results and to advocate for SERT and Emerald as the harmonized energy efficiency test metrics for server and storage products.
- Assisting the ENERGY STAR program and regulatory bodies in China, the European Union and Japan with the development of server energy efficiency criteria based on the SERT metric.
IBM has maintained a program focused on the environmental attributes of our product packaging since the late 1980s. A key priority is to design products which can be shipped with minimal packaging. Whenever possible, we choose packaging materials that have less adverse impact on the environment and collaborate with suppliers to use recycled and recyclable materials and to promote reuse.
To reduce the environmental impacts of our product packaging, IBM set a goal in 2021 to eliminate nonessential plastic packaging from IBM logo hardware products by year-end 2024. For essential plastic packaging, our goal is to ensure such packaging is designed to be 100% reusable, recyclable, or compostable, or incorporates 30% or more recycled content where technically feasible.
Most of the packaging material (by weight) used for IBM logo products is cellulose-based (e.g., timber, corrugated cardboard) and procured from suppliers that certify it is sourced from sustainably managed forests. Small amounts of primary packaging are plastic, used mainly to protect IBM logo products from moisture during handling and shipment or physical damage from shock and vibration of fragile systems. In addition, ancillary plastic packaging is used for secondary or tertiary applications to help secure and consolidate loads for shipment. We identified 21 single-use plastic elimination or substitution projects and have completed 13 projects as of year-end 2023. The 13 completed projects will avoid the use of an estimated 99.7 metric tons (mt) per year of virgin plastic. In 2024, we plan to complete the 8 remaining projects.
We also implemented other packaging material use efficiency and waste reduction projects in 2023. For IBM Spectrum Fusion™ and IBM Power®, we completed several packaging redesigns which resulted in the consolidation of products into bulk packaging. With this redesign, the packaging for IBM Spectrum Fusion was reduced by 73% (by weight) for wood, 95% for plastic foam, and 42% for corrugated cardboard. For IBM Power, we reduced the number of pallets required for larger orders through consolidation of the packages onto larger pallets, eliminating smaller pallets. This combination of projects resulted in the elimination of 73.5 mt of packaging waste in 2023.