(Justmeans.com / CSR News) - Late last week, I had the great opportunity to sit on a sustainability panel with some colleagues from fellow Silicon Valley companies. In the years that I’ve been responsible for various environmental and product sustainability initiatives at AMD, I’ve seen firsthand how corporate sustainability initiatives have grown and broadened. Now, more than ever, we’re seeing increased focus on sustainable business practices and the ideas just keep getting more creative and more impactful.

To share some of the ideas presented by my fellow panelists...

One company, Adobe, reported that it is focused on doing wind power installations because it wants to make a statement about the importance of renewable energy to the future of the U.S. And Cisco and Sabre presented sustainability initiatives that go hand-in-hand with the business space they occupy. Cisco is promoting their latest video-conference technology as an alternative to travel, and Sabre, which owns Travelocity, suggests including “green” criteria in travel vendor procurement & practices.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention some of AMD’s most recent initiatives in this space. On the operational side, we capped a multi-year planning and building effort in 2009 by achieving LEED® Gold certification from the US Green Building Council for our Austin, TX campus.  This campus was designed to achieve annual savings of seven million KWh of energy and more than one million gallons of water, compared to base case construction that did not include comparable “green” features. Last year we worked with talented interns from the EDF Climate Corps to identify even more ways to reduce the environmental impact of that facility as well as our Silicon Valley campus. This year, we’re finalizing a carbon footprinting project for select AMD products with the Carbon Trust, and we look forward to working with that organization and rolling out the results of that soon. This project is definitely making me take a closer look at AMD sustainability priorities and reporting going forward 

All panelists agreed that even with the economic downturn, sustainability remains a key focus for their companies. The 50 or 60 audience members in attendance are further evidence that sustainability is here to stay. And I for one, am glad.

Donna Sadowy is Regulatory Affairs Manager, Energy & Environment, AMD. Her postings are her own opinions and may not represent AMD's positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such links sites and no endorsement is implied.