Enabling A Sustainable Approach To Your Digital Growth

As a society, we are growing more digital, with more than 65% of the global GDP being digital by 2023. When developing technologies modify and transform the way many sectors function to be more sustainable and efficient, this transformation offers numerous advantages for society.

Yet, it also means that our need for digital infrastructure and devices is increasing, consuming more of the total power budget and posing a waste disposal difficulty when they need to be replaced. With more strict laws and reporting requirements being implemented globally, this has also become an essential premise for the government.

As a consequence, how we manage the lifespan of our digital assets is becoming more important in order to limit emissions, pollution, overhead, and waste at all stages.

The Issue of E-Waste

According to the UN, a record 53.6 million metric tonnes of electronic trash was created globally in 2019. Just 17% was collected and recycled properly. Although the issue of electronic waste is not new, the emergence of circular economy concepts and activities to support solutions has witnessed a rapid increase in recent years.

The rising emphasis on digitization, compounded by the COVID-19 epidemic, has increased the urgency of finding methods to cope with the growing volume of outmoded or defective electronic equipment. The amount of IT gear needed as part of this digitization process will be significant: According to IDC, there will be up to 4.6 billion pieces of corporate equipment in use globally by 2025, including personal computing devices, mobile phones, printers, and other enterprise infrastructure such as servers, storage, and networking appliances.

Simultaneously, all stakeholders' current emphasis on sustainability forces organizations worldwide to reconsider their attitudes toward various environmental aspects of their daily operations, including how their IT practices and operations impact their ultimate corporate sustainability goals. Moreover, regulatory compliance is forcing firms to choose circular economy alternatives to their old consumption strategies.

The Importance of Transitioning to a Circular Economy

According to the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, a circular economy requires progressively disconnecting economic activity from using limited resources and designing waste out of the system. The circular model creates economic, natural, and social capital by relying on renewable and environmentally benign energy sources. It is founded on three guiding principles:

• Reduce waste and pollution; 
• Reuse items and resources; and 
• Regenerate natural systems

Considering Dell Technologies' Technology Rotation

As technology demands outpace budgets, new payment options like Technology Rotation may help optimize IT expenditure while also addressing business concerns in an ecologically friendly manner.

Technology rotation is a business approach that allows firms to preserve liquidity, capitalize on current technology, and contribute to the circular economy. IT Asset Disposal strategies may be integrated into IT procurement processes to assist organizations in decreasing their long-term environmental impact, modernizing their equipment, and generating financial savings. When the secure data sanitization is done, Dell Technologies assists with refurbishing and remarketing of assets after the term. Assets that cannot be reconditioned are recycled safely and responsibly.

Conclusion and Suggestions

Organizations must increasingly evaluate how they purchase and dispose of IT assets responsibly. This has implications for the procurement function, which must incorporate more sustainable elements into the selection process in order to ensure a sustainable supply chain and partner ecosystem, as well as a shift to usage-based models and away from more traditional ownership models, as well as all other functions within the organization. Businesses must examine what happens when their assets reach the end of their initial life.

Organizations worldwide must be part of the solution to reduce e-waste, whether as part of their business objectives or to comply with expanding national and regional laws. IT consumption models must transition toward "as a Service" models for various reasons, including present supply chain constraints and a more general shift toward supply chain decentralization. IT asset disposal initiatives are quickly becoming critical to a company's future success, reducing reliance on global supply networks.

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