New Circular Economy Report helps organizations measure contribution to corporate sustainability goals when retiring end-of-use assets
HPE Financial Services announced a new Circular Economy Report that provides IT and sustainability organizations with a tool to estimate and share the carbon, energy and landfill waste savings achieved by returning retired or end-of-use assets to HPE, for processing through HPE Technology Renewal Centers.
Based on deep material science and product manufacturing information, the Circular Economy Report shows a breakdown by category of the products that were refurbished, remarketed and reintroduced into the economy, as well and those materials that were put back into the economy as recycled materials. The report can be used by organizations when disclosing their indirect (Scope 3) greenhouse gas emissions to investor and customer-driven disclosures such as the CDP.
“A Circular Economy commitment helps IT meet business and sustainability goals, while reducing the world’s growing e-waste problem”, said Irv Rothman, President and CEO of HPE Financial Services. “Our aspiration is to help customers think about their infrastructure in new ways, build strategies to extend and extract value from what they have, and use retired assets to help fund the transition to new infrastructure.”
As companies leverage the power of connectivity and data to generate business value, they are investing in expanding their IT infrastructure to store and process exponentially more information. There is an opportunity and imperative to invest in technology that will allow businesses to operate and thrive in a resource-constrained world and find new ways to manage the explosive demand for data by using far less space, materials, and energy; this is the Circular Economy.
A Circular Economy reimagines a take-make-dispose system to a circular and regenerative economy. It considers the full product lifecycle: from resource extraction, to product design and use – all the way to end-of-use management to extend product and material life and lower total cost of ownership. From a customer perspective, key drivers for a Circular Economy approach are new sources of business value and infrastructure efficiency. From a sustainability perspective, the need to move to a Circular Economy is driven by a consumption rate that is beyond the earth’s ability to replenish.
Applying Circular Economy principles to the IT industry drives a more effective use of products and materials and enables businesses to retire their IT assets in a secure, compliant, and environmentally responsible manner. A recent HPE Financial Services study showed that sustainability is critical, with 79 percent of companies committing to an environmental sustainability strategy, and 69 percent specifically having an IT sustainability strategy in place. In addition, 48 percent of the companies surveyed are highly regulated and must report on environmental impacts.
