While rapid innovation offers businesses a competitive advantage, there can also be social and environmental impacts that need to be managed. Factoring the circular economy into a complete product life cycle allows businesses to not only counter these impacts, but also yield financial and environmental savings. The concept of the circular economy is based on building an economic system designed to maximise resources and minimise waste.
Today, many vendors have programs to assist businesses in participating in the circular economy and, at AC3, we partner with HPE’s leading program to help our customers contribute to the cause. The impact of simply returning old end user hardware is wider than most of us would imagine. More than 90% of workplace units such as desktops, notebooks, monitors and printers recovered by HPE are refurbished, according to HPE’s Circular Economy Report. Of that which can’t be refurbished, almost all can be recycled. It’s a similar story with enterprise units such as servers, network, storage and power.
The benefits of asset life cycle solutions are clear. HPE Financial Services’ IT refurbishing and recycling efforts have recovered the equivalent of three million bottles worth of plastic, 1100 cars worth of ferrous metals and 27 commercial jet engines worth of non-ferrous metals. Meanwhile, the energy savings are equivalent to the average annual energy consumption of 40,000 households. The reduction in CO2e (carbon dioxide equivalent) emissions is equivalent to the output of 1200 cars.
Engaging in something as simple as an asset life cycle program can improve your business’ sustainability efforts. It’s even better if you can quantify your own environmental impact and savings, which will not only improve your contribution to the community, and likely your corporate social responsibility strategy, but will also go a long way to engaging your workforce by doing good.
Along with ‘reuse’ and ‘recycle’, there is also a strong ‘reduce’ aspect to the circular economy. It is not just about refurbishing and recycling products at their end-of-life; it extends throughout the entire life cycle, right back to the initial design and manufacturing.
Designing out waste and maximising the value of resources throughout the product life cycle is
a key pillar of the circular economy approach. Not only does this benefit the environment, it can also benefit a business’ bottom line through optimising operations and processes.
The aim is to achieve more with less environmental impact, incorporating aspects such as materials selection and effective use of resources. Efficient designs that maximise material, resource and equipment efficiencies can help businesses reduce CapEx and OpEx.
These efforts don’t end when a product rolls off the production line. It also covers developing more efficient processes – in terms of energy and materials – to manage IT assets in an ongoing secure, compliant and environmentally responsible manner.
Improvements at the design phase also pay off at the other end of the life cycle, providing a longer useful life while retaining residual value. This includes improving options for repair, upgrade, reuse and refurbishment.
Embracing the circular economy isn’t just a question of changing the way your business handles IT products once they’ve reached the end of their useful life. It’s also about ensuring that those products are contributing towards a sustainable future from the moment they leave the drawing board.
This article is from AC3's magazine Three. Click here to read stories on emerging technology, the new way of thinking in the technology world, and hear from successful people and their tech careers.
