How Can the Circular Economy Reduce Your Business's Environmental Impact?

Waste is nothing new, and neither is recycling. What has changed drastically in recent years is the massive amounts of electronic waste or e-waste we’re creating.

Because most of us only buy a new electronic device every 1-2 years, we don’t tend to worry about what happens to our old devices. We dutifully recycle plastic and glass on a daily basis, but we pay less attention to what should or could happen to our electronic devices when we’re finished with them.

When we consider the number of new devices our business rolls out every year, it’s no surprise that we produce upwards of 50 million tonnes of e-waste every year globally. Much of this e-waste is dumped illegally, and e-waste landfills are considered some of the most toxic places on Earth.

Thankfully, it doesn’t have to be this way, as our electronic devices can still be circulated back into use in one form or another. When we design devices correctly and pay more attention to the materials contained in each device, we can maximise the useful lifetime of everything we create.

This is the essence of what’s now known as the circular economy, and it’s a system that could offer your business new avenues for being both more sustainable and cost effective.

Closing the loop

The concept of a circular economy has been explored for decades by various academic groups and think tanks, but it reached broad appeal when the Ellen MacArthur Foundation partnered with McKinsey Research for their 2013 landmark report: Towards the Circular Economy: Economic and business rationale for an accelerated transition.

In the report, a new economic model is described which can decouple global economic development from finite resource consumption. By restoring and reusing products, components, and materials at their highest utility and value at all times, a circular economy:

• addresses mounting resource-related challenges for business and economies
• generates growth and creates jobs
• reduces environmental impacts, including carbon emissions.

Fast forward to the 2018 World Economic Forum, and HP joined the Platform for Accelerating the Circular Economy (PACE) and in 2019 extended their commitment to continue transitioning to a circular “make, use, reuse” approach that seeks to close the loop for their products. As a member of the Ellen MacArthur Foundation global commitment to address plastic waste at its source, HP now innovates to ensure the plastics they use are reusable or recyclable, while circulating plastics away from the environment and back into the economy.

From ownership to outcomes

Dovetailing with the movement towards the circular economy has been the popularity of everything-as-a-service (XaaS) models for IT investment. Driven by the switch from on-premise infrastructure to the cloud, organisations are enthusiastically adopting new models of IT investment that are less about owning assets, and more about getting an outcome.

One area that is ripe for this transition is in device management. Organisations want to equip users with the right hardware and support to get the job done, while improving end user productivity, IT efficiency, and cost predictability.

This is where HP Device as a Service (DaaS) offers a complete solution that combines hardware, support, insightful analytics, proactive management services for every stage of an organisation’s device lifecycle. Not only does it reduce the costs and complexity of owning and managing devices – it also contributes to a more sustainable operating model for businesses.

As a partner of HP and Intel®, we have assisted many organisations to reduce their waste and emissions, because the HP devices we supply are designed to be repaired. The Laptop Company is helping save around 150kg of carbon (plus manufacturing waste) for each device we repair instead of replacing with new. 

We are proudly delivering HP’s DaaS to help NZ businesses maximise the value and useful life of the devices used across their workforce. We can tailor a HP DaaS solution that enables you to drive productivity, reduce costs and complexity, all while creating a more sustainable future. 

View HP Range

Intel and the Intel logo are trademarks of Intel Corporation or its subsidiaries in the U.S. and/or other countries.