Putting IT on the sustainability agenda
Every year, major companies like Apple and Samsung deliver their eagerly awaited new product announcements.
Their loyal fans respond by ditching their “old” devices in favour of the latest model, knowing that the next advance is only a few months away!
New technology can be very enticing for consumers, but this endless desire for the newest product creates enormous amounts of waste.
For decades, the IT industry has built economies on the principle of ever-faster turnover, harnessing the power of marketing to encourage consumers to believe that the sooner they replace their devices, the better.
Today, we are waking up to the fact that this approach, which applies to almost every piece of technology we consume, is no longer viable.
It’s time to find a more sustainable model that is better for businesses, end users, and the planet.
The circular economy – a viable alternative
The need to look beyond the linear industrial model, often referred to as ‘Take, Make & Dispose’, is now well accepted even as we become painfully aware of its damaging effects upon our increasingly fragile world.
Thankfully, a much more sustainable approach is growing in use, known as ‘The Circular Economy’. This alternative, more progressive approach builds economic, natural, and social capital through restoration and regeneration.
A circular economy focuses on maintaining the value of products, materials and resources through a combination of reuse, recycling and remanufacturing.
As a result, the consumption of raw materials and the production of waste are significantly reduced or even eliminated.
The circular economy is already here
The need to look beyond the linear industrial model, often called ‘Take, Make & Dispose’, is now well accepted even as we become painfully aware of its damaging effects upon our increasingly fragile world.
Accenture Strategy reports that 94% of companies surveyed adopt elements of circular supply chains, with 44% citing ‘recycling’ as a priority2. These positive figures demonstrate the policies already implemented by leading enterprises that recognise their social responsibility.
However, this is just the tip of the iceberg. Much more value can and will be released when more organisations actively incorporate the principles of waste elimination, reuse and refurbishment into their supply chains.
Only 18% of companies are currently reusing or remanufacturing recovered materials. A 2015 study by the Club of Rome says that by 20303, carbon emissions could be cut by almost 70% if a critical set of circular economy policy measures were adopted. This still rings true today, but we need to commit more to these principles.
One of the major contributors to this reduction in carbon consumption will come from the concept of resource efficiency.
This concept embodies the creation of new industrial systems that actively enable the power of reuse, remanufacturing and recycling.
The result is a decoupling of our current dependency on the endless consumption of raw materials and the production of unsustainable levels of waste.
2. https://www.accenture.com/nl-en/_acnmedia/PDF-49/Accenture-Full-Circle-POV.pdf
3. https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2015/apr/15/circular-economy-jobs-climate-carbon-emissions-eutaxation
Good for our consumers, good for our planet
Recognising your organisation’s environmental impact will positively affect both customers and employees.
When it comes to purchase behaviour, it’s become abundantly clear that people care. In fact, the majority (73%) of global consumers say they would definitely or probably change their consumption habits to reduce their impact on the environment.4
81% of global respondents feel strongly that companies should help improve the environment.5
As a result of this growing bank of evidence, which shows that consumers are becoming increasingly aware of the ethics of the businesses they buy from, demonstrable environmental and social responsibility is now high on every CEO’s agenda.
4. https://nielseniq.com/global/en/insights/analysis
5. https://nielseniq.com/global/en/insights/analysis/2018/global-consumers-seek-companies-thatcare-
Much more than recycling
While the linear economy concentrates on the extraction, consumption and disposal of materials, the circular economy takes a much longer-term view.
It starts with using as few resources as possible during manufacture.
Then, it considers how to keep those resources in circulation for as long as possible while extracting the maximum value from them throughout their life cycle. Ease of dismantling, repairability and remanufacture and built-in at the design stage.
When the product ends its “normal” lifespan, a circular economy approach seeks to recover, repurpose and regenerate those products, significantly extending their service life.
Moving to a circular economy offers the best chance of avoiding dangerous climate change, enabling countries to meet the Paris Agreement on Climate Action goals.
This is the key finding of The Circularity Gap Report 2019, released by the Circle Economy, a group supported by the UN Environment and the Global Environment Facility.
The report highlights the scope of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by applying circular principles—notably reusing, remanufacturing, and recycling—to key sectors. It comments that most governments barely consider circular economy measures in policies to meet the Paris Agreement targets.
The report also finds that the global economy is only 9% circular – just 9% of the 92.8 billion tonnes of minerals, fossil fuels, metals and biomass that enter the economy are re-used annually. Climate change and material use are closely linked. Circle Economy calculates that 62% of global greenhouse gas emissions (excluding those from land use and forestry) are released during the extraction, processing and manufacturing of goods to serve society’s needs; only 38% are emitted in the delivery and use of products and services.
Yet global use of materials is accelerating; it has more than tripled since 1970 and could double again by 2050 without action, according to the UN International Resource Panel.
