Buy a Dell, plant a tree

Buy a Dell, plant a tree

Dell is launching a new program aimed at improving the environment. Customers will be asked to donate money to charities that plant trees. Dell is asking for donations of $2 per laptop and $6 per desktop.


Dell's backs plan to offset destruction of trees

By Damon Darlin Published: January 10, 2007

LAS VEGAS: Michael Dell, who made his name building computers, has a new goal — planting trees.

In a speech at the Consumer Electronics Show here, Dell urged the electronics industry to foster the planting of trees to offset the effect on the environment of the energy consumed by the devices they make.

He said Dell, the computer company he founded, would begin a program called "Plant a Tree for Me," asking customers to donate $2 for every notebook computer they buy and $6 for every desktop PC. The money would be given to the Conservation Fund and the Carbonfund, two charities that promote ways to reduce or offset carbon emissions, to buy and plant trees.

Dell said the planting of trees would absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, offsetting the equivalent emissions resulting from the production of electricity for computers over three years.

In his speech Tuesday, Dell also said, "I challenge every PC vendor in the industry to join us in providing free recycling. This is a better way than government regulation."


Dell intends to cover the administrative costs of the tree-planting program. Dell was not able to estimate those costs.

Customers in the United States will be given the chance to donate when they configure an order for a Dell PC. Dell also said the program would be expanded in April to consumers overseas.

Dell said in an interview before the speech that the tree-planting initiative came up during a meeting that he and Kevin Rollins, Dell's chief executive, held to discuss the company's efforts to recycle and reduce the use of various chemicals like brominated flame retardants and polyvinyl chloride. He said he thought, "This would be a fantastic way for our customers to get involved."

Dell said, "I am personally interested in the environment, but I have to give credit to our customers who have encouraged us in this direction."

Dell offers its customers free recycling of their old computers. The company said it wanted to recover about 275 million pounds of old computers from customers by 2009. "We're on track, a little ahead, in fact, to meet our goal," Dell said.

In his speech, Dell made a plea to the telecommunications industry to speed its efforts to lay high-speed fiber cable that would provide more capacity for moving content like movies and videos on the Internet to the home.

He noted that high-speed networks are already available in the Czech Republic, Denmark, Dubai, France, Iceland, Japan, Kuwait, Romania and Slovenia, while the United States lags behind. He said that just 44 percent of U.S. households had a high-speed broadband connection and that only 1 percent of those homes had a fiber connection.