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Sustainable, responsible, affordable: Tackling tech’s growing eco impact
Read time: 6 mins Added date: 15/01/2025
How does the technology your business uses impact the environment? That was the key question at an event hosted by Lloyds as part of Leeds Digital Festival 2024. The event was co-hosted by the #WECAN Network, a community of women, businesses and supporting organisations founded by Leeds Beckett University, Edge Hill University and Social Enterprise Yorkshire & Humber (SEYH).
Guests heard from Astrid Wynne, Head of Public Sector and Sustainability at Techbuyer, the Harrogate-based business that specialises in the buying, refurbishing and selling of data centre equipment. Astrid set the scene by outlining the growing impact that technology is having on the planet and its people.
While many sectors of the economy have cut the emissions they generate in recent years, technology has done the opposite. The manufacture of devices from PCs to smartphones relies on huge global supply chains and energy intensive processes, which means a laptop weighing less than 2kg might actually be responsible for more like 278kg of carbon emissions before it is even switched on by the first user1.
Hardware supply chains
Supply chains for tech hardware often start with the mining of raw materials, such as cobalt, in places like the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Central African Republic. This is a trade that has been reported to support human rights abuses, child labour, dangerous working conditions, environmental contamination, oppression and more. These raw materials are then transported to the Far East where they are used to make various components from batteries to chips, where labour is cheaper. These components might then be shipped to Europe or the US to be assembled into finished products and sold.
Many business customers typically seek to refresh hardware they perceive as being outdated every three to five years. After this, the whole cycle is reversed, with huge amounts of e-waste sent back to the developing world, including Africa, for recycling. But this is often carried out in a very crude, inefficient, polluting and dangerous way, with materials of value like copper and aluminium extracted from devices and the remainder dumped.
Reuse and redeploy
To minimise the impact of these inefficiencies in the recycling process for tech hardware, reuse and redeployment of devices should be the norm, and recycling should only be a last resort.
Recycling won’t recover all the materials in your tech, and many of the less valuable materials that are left over are the ones with the biggest environmental and social risk. While there are recycling technologies on the horizon that work better at recovering a wider range of materials, more time is needed to prove the concept and then scale up the process.
Astrid Wynne Head of Public Sector and Sustainability, TechbuyerIn the meantime, buying refurbished tech has a lower cost and a smaller environmental footprint than buying new tech, but still comes with the same benefits, including warranties and access to tech support.
Best practice
Vicky Heward is Co-Director and Owner of Optimo, the operational consultancy that works with businesses to help make them as efficient as possible, and she spoke about the everyday actions that can help organisations reduce their digital footprint.
Vicky explained how every email we send, photo we take, website we visit, video call we make and document we create all contribute to our digital footprint. While the impact of individual actions can be tiny, when habits change across an organisation, the combined impact can be significant.
For example, sending one standard email generates 0.3g of carbon2. That doesn’t sound much, but if you have a team of eight staff, sending eight emails a day, working 250 days a year, then that’s 27.5kg of carbon a year – roughly equivalent to a 100km car journey3.
We also collect a huge amount of data in our business and personal lives, including photos, files and documents, which has to be stored somewhere. Much of that is dark data; information that is collected and never used again, but still uses energy to keep it alive and all adds to a carbon footprint. Around 60% to 70% of data that is stored is never used again4.
However, there are things we can do to use technology more efficiently, including:
- Don’t click reply all unless you really have to.
- Avoid attachments if possible. Use a shared folder instead.
- Have a digital detox. Clean out your inbox regularly.
Website
- Do you need videos to automatically launch, with sound? Would a play button be just as good?
- Do you need high-resolution images? Lower resolution may be just as good.
- Some colours are more energy hungry than others. White is the worst, darker colours are better.
- Who hosts your site? Some hosting companies only use renewable energy.
Platforms and tools
- Do any of your systems duplicate the same functions? You may not need them all.
- Do you actually use all the functionality? Review the functionality of all tools, to find the right fit based on your business requirements.
- How are platforms powered? When choosing a new tool, investigate if they are sustainable.
More actions
- Using audio rather than video calls could save 90% of energy use5.
- Using Wi-Fi instead of a cellular connection uses nine times less energy.
Ultimately, it’s up to every business to understand all the drivers of their environmental impact and create a strategy to reduce them.
The way we buy and use technology must be fundamental to that process, and driving awareness of the consequences of small, simple changes to behaviour can empower all colleagues to contribute to creating a more sustainable organisation.
Led by Leeds Beckett University in partnership with Edge Hill University and SEYH, the #WECAN Network supported by Lloyds is a community of women, businesses and supporting organisations. To put it simply – they support, champion and connect women in leadership. Visit their website and follow on LinkedIn to find out more.
Supporting women-owned businesses
Women entrepreneurs are a vital part of society and the economy, and we’re committed to supporting them to grow and scale their businesses.
Any views, opinions or forecasts expressed in this article represent views or opinions of forum participants and are not intended to be, and should not be viewed as advice or a recommendation from Lloyds Bank or any other party.