In mid-May 2022, Brisbane’s Courier Mail ran a story titled ‘why it’s good practice to look at the big picture with ESG [Environmental, Social and Governance] issues’ exploring how organisations with good ESG credentials are feeling the business and bottom line benefits.

Damien Whelan is APJ Director of Asset Life Cycle Solutions and HPEFS Enterprise Sales Director – South Pacific at Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) and says his company is way ahead of the curve on this one.

HPE has had a long-established commitment to sustainability and knows how good ESG practices also make sense from a business point of view. It would be fair to say it was a pioneer in this space – for over a decade HPE has been continually listed in the Dow Jones Sustainability Index, receiving the highest scores for its climate strategy. It’s also been a long-time member of the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, aligning with its circular economy principles.

It’s a huge topic, but one that is in the organisation’s DNA, says Whelan.

“From an HPE perspective, it includes everything from the way a product is designed and put together to renewables, recyclables, looking at the design phase and saying, ‘how can we design products that are going to stay in the circle for as long as possible, that are going to use lower amounts of energy and have renewables as part of the design process?’” he says. “Then, once they’re within a customer’s site, how do they help reduce their footprint, their energy and their impact on the environment?”

Where HPE Financial Services comes into the mix is in the pathways it offers to ensure the assets stay in the circle even longer. These pathways include various investment solutions, leasing programs, asset upcycling programs and certified pre-owned programs.

“It’s putting them into secondary and tertiary environments where they’re still functional and still providing value to customers,” says Whelan.

On the back of this, there is an information gathering process, which HPE feeds back to its customers, letting them know exactly how much carbon emissions and landfill they’ve avoided and how much energy they’ve saved or avoided using. It’s not just lip service or the organisation spruiking its credentials, says Whelan. “It’s backed up by a science-based approach, which is audited. It’s an independent body that has helped to put it together.”

HPE’s customers use these reports internally, he adds, in their own sustainability reports, their annual reports and their marketing. This includes AC3.

“We’ve given AC3 a report that tells them exactly what they’ve saved through their partnership with us,” says Whelan.

Stronger together

“When people think of core leasing services, they don’t instantly think of sustainability,” says Whelan, “but that’s exactly what it is.”

HPE has partnered with AC3, providing it with core leasing services, for nearly a decade. The relationship has continued during the different evolutions AC3 has experienced over the period, says Whelan, and reams of data has been fed back to AC3 regarding its ecological footprint.

HPE’s Circular Economy Report details environmental impact statistics including energy savings equivalent to the annual consumption of more than 17,000 households, carbon dioxide emissions saved of more than 42,000 cars, plastic returned for recycling equivalent to more than 140 million plastic bottles and waste kept from landfill equivalent to around 350,000 moving boxes.

AC3 also takes advantage of the GreenLake offering. This edge to-cloud platform is a sustainability focused consumption model that saves, on average, 30 percent of total costs. “You use the asset when you need the asset, you don’t have to build out extra space on your data centre,” says Whelan. “You don’t have to power up assets that are going to sit idle, and then when you’ve used those assets for a period of time, you return them to HPE and they redeploy them.”

AC3’s joint commitment to advancing sustainability then flows on to its customers, as there is hard data that can be passed along the supply chain, explains Whelan. “The majority of AC3’s customers will have a sustainability agenda. They’ll have statements and targets.” This is the first step, he says, followed by a more detailed investigation of underlying assets and undertaking the change from a ‘use and dispose’ methodology to a circular one.

After analysing an asset, how long it will be needed for and what business benefit it will afford, organisations could consider non-traditional models like GreenLake, says Whelan, “to make sure they’re getting what they need from the asset, but also making sure it then gets deployed and doesn’t negatively impact the environment,” he adds.

Combining the benefits of a product like GreenLake and the HPEFS Circular Economy report is a great way to spread the green message, he adds, a message that he believes most IT departments are keen to embrace.

“It’s probably the most tangible way a CIO (chief information officer) can say, ‘this is what I’m doing to help contribute towards our organisation’s sustainability initiatives,” he concludes.