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Corporate Citizenship Report (PDF - 5 MB)

Cisco and the Environment

Operations

One of Cisco's primary environmental impacts is greenhouse gas emissions associated with our energy use and environmental issues associated with waste disposal. Cisco's strategy is to minimize energy use and waste generation, providing both environmental and business profitability benefits. We have also identified our use of ozone-depleting substances, business travel, and water use to be important issues to monitor and manage within our global operations. This section describes the systems we use to manage our operational environmental impacts.

Additional strategies and efforts to minimize the environmental impacts related to products are outlined in the Product Stewardship section of this report.

Case Study: Connected Workplace

In FY2004, Cisco Workplace Resources launched a pilot project designed to enhance employee satisfaction, productivity, and efficiency in our work environment by redesigning a building at our San Jose headquarters.

Taking advantage of technology and changes in the way people work helps us cut costs and reduce our impact on the environment by reducing the amount of infrastructure required and associated energy, water, and materials used. The new environment was also designed to reflect the changing work patterns of our employees, increase employee satisfaction, and encourage collaboration.

Our workspace has traditionally been divided into separate offices and cubicles, many of which remained vacant approximately 65 percent of the time while employees were at meetings or working flexible hours. These were replaced by a range of new spaces including open work spaces, meeting areas, and rooms that support employee needs for privacy. The redesigned offices use Cisco wireless and IP Communications technology to provide flexible working areas to meet the needs of individual workers.

Rather than having an allocated space, employees can easily plug in their laptop and log in to their personalized telephone number in any suitable workspace.

The newly designed offices allow 140 people to work in a building that would normally accommodate fewer than 90. This more efficient use of office space has reduced the amount of equipment we use, such as office furniture and technology. For example, the amount of cabling required was cut by more than half.

A survey conducted in March 2005 showed that the number of employees who were satisfied or extremely satisfied with the building increased after the redesign. They felt the new working environment had improved their productivity and enhanced their ability to collaborate with other team members and between teams.

We intend to quantify the environmental benefits of the Connected Workplace and use this data to further develop the concept in the design of our future offices.
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"Today, it’s much more team-oriented, much more collaborative. The Connected Workplace accommodates the way people work today."

Dave Evans, Chief Technologist, Internet Business Solutions, Cisco