Yes, on April 16, 2020, UL announced (https://www.ul.com/news/hp-receives-first-recycled-content-validation-ocean-bound-plastics-ul) that HP had achieved recycled content validations from UL for five of its resins, which contain between 5 to 99% recycled content from ocean-bound plastic. HP is the first company to achieve validation from UL to the UL 2809 Environmental Claim Validation Procedure (ECVP) for Recycled Content Standard which now includes auditing of social responsibility procedures. The UL 2809 Standard specifically measures the amount of recycled content in products and was updated to include assessments of the social impacts of collecting pre-consumer and post-consumer recycled materials on local economies, including criteria for ocean-bound and ocean sourced plastics.
As a volume leader in using ocean-bound plastic materials in HP products, we are focused on innovating and using sustainable materials while creating economic opportunities for underserved communities. HP embarked on finding a solution to validate the amount of recycled content in the resins we use, while also addressing the social impact of this process.
We worked with UL to audit suppliers to determine safe labor practices and risk mitigation at the recycled material collector in Haiti and added these criteria to the recently updated and expanded UL 2809 Standard.
HP’s validated ocean-bound resins are also used in the HP Elite Dragonfly, the world’s first PC with ocean-bound plastic, the HP EliteDisplay E273d, the world’s first display manufactured with ocean-bound plastics, and the HP ZBook Create and ZBook Studio, the world’s first mobile workstation with ocean-bound plastic.
We are continuing to scale our ocean-bound plastic efforts and we are including ocean-bound plastic material in all new HP Elite and HP Pro desktop and notebook computers, as well as Elite and Z Displays and Pavilion notebooks. Moreover, more than half of HP ink supplies contain OBP. In August of 2021, we began shipping Z4, Z6, and Z8 G4 workstations with 25% ocean-bound plastic in fans. Overall, we have also invested $2 million in a washing line in Haiti that will produce cleaner, higher-quality recycled plastic locally for use in more HP products. This investment continues HP’s longstanding commitment to diverting ocean-bound plastic and contributing to a lower-carbon, circular economy while providing jobs and education opportunities locally.
More information can be found on this link (https://www.ul.com/news/hp-receives-first-recycled-content-validation-ocean-bound-plastics-ul) and also here (https://press.hp.com/us/en/press-releases/2020/hp-helps-bring-creativity-life-breakthrough-devices.html).
Internal note: HP products are not validated to UL ECVP 2809. It is the OBP or recycled content material used in the products that are validated. I make this distinction because products can be validated but it is a more complicated process than the resin. We would need to have each product manufacturing site audited – so, instead, we have validated the plastic used in the products and we can make statements like ‘… this product uses UL certified OBP resin’. We cannot make statements like ‘… this product is UL certified to contain OBP resin’.