International Business Machines : 2020 IBM and the Environment Report

2020

IBM and the Environment Report

31st AnnualEnvironmental Report

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Letter from the Chief

Sustainability Officer

Wayne S. Balta

Vice President, Corporate

Environmental Affairs and

Product Safety, and

Chief Sustainability Officer

This year marks the beginning of IBM's fourth decade of environmental reporting, underscoring our sustained commitment to environmental leadership. Throughout, we have always strived for transparency and authenticity.

Accordingly, this report presents our latest results. It also unveils a substantial update to IBM's voluntary environmental goals. With decades of attention to emerging environmental challenges, we understand that setting environmental goals, holding ourselves accountable, and communicating our progress with transparency and authenticity are good for both the environment and our business.

Looking ahead, we anticipate in 2022 that we will stop publishing a stand-alone corporate environmental report in favor of fully integrating essential environmental content into our overall IBM Corporate Responsibility Report. While a stand-alone environmental report has served IBM and its audiences well for 31 years, today's integration of social and governance issues with the environment makes this choice a logical one.

We have always considered environmental leadership to be a long-term strategic imperative regardless of short-term business and economic cycles, and regardless of whether the topic is currently popular or not. After all, it's relatively easy to go green when so many are watching what a company does. But genuine leadership also involves what a company does when virtually no one is watching. You can depend upon IBM for an unwavering commitment, through thick and thin, substantiated by decades of action and results.

Wayne S. Balta

Vice President, Corporate Environmental

Affairs and Product Safety, and

Chief Sustainability Officer

July 2021

2	2020 IBM and the Environment Report

50-year anniversary of IBM's first environmental policy

This year marks the 50th anniversary of IBM's first corporate environmental policy, which was put into place by IBM's Chairman and CEO at that time, Thomas J. Watson Jr., in May 1971. While the policy has been updated several times since its initial publication, the key, strategic tenets of the policy have guided IBM's environmental leadership across 50 years. Importantly, this early directive-published at the outset of the modern-day environmental movement- helped enable IBM to integrate environmental responsibility early on throughout the fabric of its business.

Highlights of 1971 environmental policy

• Published just five months after the US Environmental Protection Agency was created and one year before the United Nations (UN) Stockholm Conference on the Environment.
• Purposefully placed responsibility upon "line management," wisely articulating the roles of line organizations and staff functions.
• Called attention to the importance of designing for the environment during product development, not just focusing on waste resulting from production.

"We accept our responsibilities as a corporate citizen in community, national and world affairs; we serve our interests best when we serve the public interest...We acknowledge our obligation as a business institution to help improve the quality of the society we are part of. We want to be in the forefront of those companies which are working to make the world a better place."

Thomas J. Watson, Jr.

(1969)

IBM System/370 Model 155 manufacturing line in the 1970s.

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Highlights

Comprehensive update to voluntary goals Announced 21 new, updated, or continuing goals for environmental sustainability,

all of which compel specific, measurable near-term action. They cover energy and climate change, conservation and biodiversity, pollution prevention

and waste management, supply chain and value chain, and our global environmental management system-including goals to help IBM achieve our target of net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2030.

Environmental Management System certification Maintained single global registration of our EMS to ISO 14001 for the 24th consecutive year and ISO 50001 for the 9th consecutive year.

Energy conservation Implemented nearly 1,400 energy conservation projects delivering energy savings of 145,500 megawatt-hours.

Procurement of renewable electricity

Procured 59.3 percent of the electricity consumed across IBM's global operations from renewable sources-surpassing our previous goal of 55 percent by 2025, five years early.

Carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions

Reduced CO2 emissions 56.6 percent against base year 2005, adjusted for acquisitions and divestitures-surpassing our previous goal of 40 percent by 2025, five years early.

Biodiversity

Created a new initiative to deploy pollinator gardens across IBM locations to help sustain critical biodiversity.

2020 IBM and the Environment Report

Water withdrawals

Reduced water withdrawals at larger locations and data centers in water-stressed regions by 6.7 percent versus 2019.

Waste recycling

Sent 83.8 percent (by weight)

of nonhazardous waste for reuse, recycling or recovery.

Product reuse and recycling

Processed 16,900 metric tons of end-of-life products and product waste, and 96.5 percent (by weight) was reused, resold, or recycled.

European Green Digital Coalition

Became a founding member of the European Green Digital Coalition in 2021, and pledged to continue developing digital technologies and services that are more energy- and material-efficient, along with methods and tools to measure the environmental impacts of these technologies.

IBM Research's Future of Climate initiative IBM Research® launched a Future of Climate initiative to help accelerate the discovery of new materials for carbon removal, leveraging its expertise in materials science and advanced computing.

External disclosure

Submitted extensive data and descriptive information to the repositories of 14 third- party organizations, answering over 1,000 individual questions in the process. Completed this document, IBM's 31st annual voluntary corporate environmental report since 1990.