Circularity means different things to different people. No one business is at the same stage when it comes to sustainability, and this means a range of solutions are required to embrace a circular economy.
Maybe you simply want solutions that are more efficient and can help your sustainability goals, or maybe you don’t even have any sustainability targets currently in place. Perhaps you’re somewhere in the middle. Wherever you are on your journey, it’s likely to impact your view on sustainability and circularity.
According to the Sustainable Agency, circularity – or indeed the circular economy – is “an economic model that follows the three Rs: Reduce, Reuse and Recycle”. While we should all aim to do our best with regard to each R, it’s natural that approaches will differ widely between organisations, leading to different viewpoints when it comes to circularity itself.
Different stages of sustainability
If you’re just starting to consider sustainability at your organisation, perhaps you’re looking to replace older, inefficient hardware with energy-efficient devices that could help to cut your emissions. Such an approach opens the door for a reduction in energy consumption, along with recycling older equipment.
Lenovo’s asset recovery service (ARS) is a great example of how your company can safely and sustainably dispose of older equipment, with the service designed to maximise reuse, recycling and the environmental disposal of end-of-life products, parts, and waste. Devices can go on to lead a second purposeful life after leaving your business, and asset recovery services can also help customers minimise the data security risks of managing the disposal of unwanted IT equipment.
If you’ve already implemented sustainability strategies across your business, the outlook on circularity could be very different. Perhaps you already have energy-efficient devices that you’d typically replace on a multi-year cycle, and retaining and reusing this hardware for an additional number of years may be an option worth considering.
Your tech provider can help when it comes to making your devices last for longer. It’s important to consider additional warranties and support if you’re running a business with older equipment, as this can provide peace of mind and faster issue resolution with direct access to technicians.
It’s inevitable that some parts will need replacing over time, but a comprehensive warranty or support package can help to keep your tech stack running efficiently with minimal downtime. This helps your business to reuse and reduce, not only contributing more to the circular economy, but also helping you to save money on unnecessary expenditure at the same time.
Solutions such as Lenovo’s Premier Support Plus also provide Accidental Damage Protection (ADP) as standard. Whether you’re part of a small startup, a medium-sized business or a huge multi-national, accidents can and do happen, and accidental damage support provides additional peace of mind, helping to keep your devices running more efficiently for longer.
Meanwhile, if you’re at the other end of the scale, with sustainability already integrated into every aspect of your business, it may seem like you’ve eradicated the low hanging fruit. But there are still plenty of areas where you can carry out reductions and improve efficiency across your business.
You could look towards different models for IT ownership, for example. Lenovo’s TruScale Device as a Service (DaaS) provides a great way to embed circularity into your IT lifecycle from the very beginning. TruScale delivers an effective pay-as-you-go subscription model that helps you to manage and scale your fleet of devices, along with responsible recycling for your old IT assets.
Bulk packaging services when you do buy new equipment can further help when it comes to reducing waste. Benefits of bulk packaging solutions include a reduction in packaging waste with less discarded material, lower transit costs, improved storage and higher pallet utilisation.
Do your bit for the environment
At present, only 7.2% of our world’s economy is circular[1], with an estimated 2.2 billion tons of waste dumped in our oceans every year[2]. Whatever your approach to sustainability, and however far you are on your journey, it’s possible to embrace the circular economy every step of the way.
Whether you’re looking to increase the lifespan of products through repair and maintenance, to reuse devices where possible, or you’re thinking of replacing your tech stack with newer, more efficient technology, always consider how your approach to sustainability can also impact the circular economy – after all, we only have one world.
