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Environmental Stewardship
Environmental Initiatives and Green Campuses
To raise awareness of environmental issues and forge relationships with local communities to improve the environment,
Agilent Malaysia employees joined other corporate teams in Penang's highly industrialized free-trade zone to rehabilitate a local river, once declared
"dead" from toxic waste. Two hundred Agilent volunteers and 80 primary school students created 10,000 tennis-ball-sized
"enzyme mud balls" made of topsoil, rice husks, molasses and a microorganism-activated solution that were used as a natural treatment to clean the river. The mud balls were tossed into the river and improved water quality by stopping the growth of algae, breaking down sludge, suppressing pathogens and controlling ammonia levels.
Agilent Singapore provided an innovative employee incentive by awarding a prize to the employee with the best energy-efficiency idea. Other activities included a
"minimal-waste week", a period with no air conditioning, an Earth Day bazaar and tree planting as well as an excursion where employees visited the Marina Barrage, a tidal and flood-control barrier in the city of Singapore.
To support the Green Building Initiative, Agilent China's
new Chengdu campus was designed and built with many energy-saving and sustainability features including environmentally friendly furniture and building materials such as eco-safe paint and coatings, water-saving faucets, energy-saving light fixtures and a heat-insulating curtain under the roof that significantly reduces electricity costs from heating, ventilation and air-conditioning in summer and winter.
Agilent's new India Manesar campus, the work site for 1,300 Agilent employees, is a state-of-the-art campus spread over 10 acres with only 28 percent of the space occupied by buildings and parking lots. The rest of the site is landscaped with variety of indigenous plants, supporting local biodiversity. Several emerging green-building concepts were put to use such as utilization of day-lighting, solar power and shallow
"wings" that shade the windows from direct sun but allow an abundance of natural light to reach deep into offices. Furthermore, water consumption has been reduced to 60 kiloliters per day (one fourth normal consumption) by harvesting rainwater (mainly for air-conditioning needs) and double-recycling of
"gray" wastewater for toilets. "Black water" is used for
landscape irrigation. Rooftop and parking lot rainfall runoff is
collected and stored in an underground tank with a capacity of
approximately five million liters - enough to supply the site for 60 days and reduce the impact on the limited local water supply. A three-step water recycling system is in place: regular water supplements rainwater for hand washing; treated hand-washing water is used for toilets with the treated flushed water used for drip irrigation of landscaping -- effective techniques for reducing evaporative losses. To moderate the summer's high ambient temperatures, building facades were installed that are only 60 percent glass and face north or south. Since the sharpest low-angle sun comes from the east and west, this minimizes the radiant absorption of heat. The east and west walls also have extra insulation to reduce heat gain. The harsh equatorial sun is further controlled with planters that shade the glazing to the south. Modeling the solar azimuth resulted in optimal building orientation to maximize the use of natural daylight and minimize radiant solar heat gain thereby reducing demands on the air-conditioning system.
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