Cisco and the Environment

As part of our ongoing commitment to quality, the environment, and business excellence, Cisco helps ensure its corporate performance through the framework of several industry standards. The ISO14001 standard developed by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), a network of the national standards institutes of 153 countries, provides the basis for our environmental policies and campus management systems.

Our environmental management system (EMS) provides a framework for identifying and managing the significant environmental aspects of our facilities, demonstrating legal compliance as a minimum standard, and achieving continual environmental improvement, by setting and reviewing progress against objectives and targets. Compliance with the ISO14001 standard is independently certified.

As part of our adherence to these standards, Cisco complies with regulatory requirements, we keep a register of all significant environmental effects of our operations, and we set targets for continual improvement in performance.

Our campuses are independently audited against the ISO14001 standard by an accredited third-party registrar, TUV Americas. As an accredited auditor, TUV Americas conducts its activities under guidelines and oversight established by the ANSI-ASQ National Accreditation Board (ANAB).

To date, Cisco has been fully successful in its external certification process for new campuses and all certified sites have successfully maintained their annual ISO certification.

Performance

To complement the external audit process and help our facilities to prepare for our third-party certification, Cisco undergoes a rigorous internal audit of our ISO14001 program. Approximately 30 internal audits are completed each year at eight sites (five currently certified, and three with certification pending in late 2005) to help ensure the conformance and continual improvement of the environmental management system.

As of FY2005, the five Cisco sites that have received certification to ISO14001 comprise approximately 52 percent of Cisco employees. The ISO14001 certified sites are: