Michael Dell

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• In 2003, under pressure from the greens, the PC maker held a five-city recycling tour, asking people to bring in their old computers. That they did - on a spring Saturday in Denver, so many people (about 2,000) brought so many old computers (about 200 tons in all) to the parking lot of Mile High Stadium that Dell (Charts) employees worked overtime to load them onto trucks. "We had people there all night," says one. The company immediately added 10 more dates to its recycling tour.

"If we sell 40 million computers a year, and the industry is going to sell 200 million computers a year, at some point they are going to come out of circulation," he says. "Where do they all go? I want to be in a position where we are doing the right thing." (Michael Dell on Recycling computers)

• Chairs a sustainability group inside the Dell company that meets every six weeks or so, frequently prodding his people to do more.
• Dell is redesigning its computers so that they use less energy; its website includes energy calculators so buyers will know how much electricity some of its products will use. The firm is aggressively cutting energy use (and greenhouse gas emissions) in its own operations. Its marketing publications now use an average of 50 percent recycled content paper, winning praise from the tough-minded activist group Forest Ethics.
• Dell announced a program called "Plant a Tree for Me" that invites its customers to offset the greenhouse gas emissions caused by the electricity used by their computers; they can add $2 to the price of a laptop or $6 to a desktop, which Dell then sends to conservation groups that offset carbon emissions by planting trees.