22 kg of chemicals, 240 kg of fossil fuels and 1,5 T of clear water are necessary to produce a desktop computer and its screen according to UNU researchers. Combined with the very short lifespan of our digital equipments, this drastically raises their lifetime environment-related energy impacts.
Digital products also contain significant quantities of heavy metals such as lead, mercury, cadmium and chromium, which pose potential health risks to production workers, recyclers and environmental risks to water supplies near landfills where they are eventually dumped.
As a result, always remember that talking about hardware footprint involves two major energy-consuming cycles:
- Production of devices (material extraction, distribution)
- Destruction of obsolete devices
Reducing our digital hardwares, Repairing, Re-using and Recycling them are the key steps to follow.
This section refers to all digital and ICT products and services such as computers and peripheral equipments (laptop, desktop, screens and accessories… ), communication equipments (phones, accessories…), consumer electronic equipments and services such as IT technical consulting and support services, IT design and development services, hosting and IT infrastructure provisioning services…
If you do not have yet a sustainable procurement policy, please refer to the global sustainable procurement policy in resources to write one.
- Analyze consumption and existing practices:
- Define targets and KPI evolution, such as:
- Develop a circular procurement when you are purchasing ICT products and include criteria with a circular approach in your specifications.
Note: Don’t overestimate the environmental and financial effects of changing to a more energy efficient device. In most cases, the potential savings can be offset by negative impacts in the manufacturing phase. (rebound effect)
To go further: Promote / demand the use of Recommendation ITU (International Telecommunication Union) -T L.1420, “Methodology for energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions impact assessment of information and communication technologies in organizations”, to quantify and report energy consumption and GHG emissions of your suppliers.
The best way to decrease your electronics footprint is to keep your equipment as long as possible. The same applies for your desktops and laptops. Extend the life of your computer from 2 to 4 years will decrease by 50% its environmental footprint (Ademe Report).
To find some tips on how to embark your management into a sustainable IT governance, make sure to read our article.
50% less
carbon footprint by extending your computer life from 2 to 4 years, as 80% of carbon footprint comes from manufacturing.
(Ademe - Sept 2019)
18 months
is the average use of a smartphone when actually its lifespan is 5 years.
Certifications:
- EPEAT
- Energy Star
- Blue Angel
ServiceNow transform old, manual ways of working into modern digital workflows and optimized IT solutions.
Especially, ServiceNow provide a solution to manage software licenses and hardware assets with intuitive workflows and lifecycle visibility. This solution is driven to optimize all assets and promote a green mindset.
Click here to contact them.
Deploying a BYOD Policy could be a good choice for your company to keep a reasonable size of your fleet of devices.
BYOD stands for Bring Your Own Device and allows / encourages people to use their own devices for work (ie laptops, smartphones). It might sound like a silver bullet for many problems but it is not that easy to deploy: Security breach possibilities, weak maintenance of the fleet (thus more chance for security breaches), ...
Here are some tips for a successful BYOD policy:
- Strategy and preparation
- Legal and communication
- Infrastructures, data and security
- Maintenance and reimbursement
If you believe BYOD is not made for your company, you can enforce COPE (Coporate Owned Personally Enabled). This is like BYOD but the difference is that the company provides the device, so extra attention should be brought to maintenance processes.
59%
of organizations allow employees to use their own devices for work purposes
2 hours
in average is the time an enployee is willing to work extra under a BYOD policy
This is a DIY - Do It Yourself Solution. If you want, you may ask a consultant to help you implement it.
- Buy repairable and upgradeable products. Laptops are harder to repair or upgrade than desktop PCs. Look for a user-replaceable battery as an absolute minimum, and ideally replaceable storage drive and RAM as well.
- Choose durable products:
- Buy refurbished products: because of the significant carbon footprint of making a computer, its lifetime should ideally be extended for as long as possible. If you can’t repair an old machine, you can extend the lifetime of another by buying a second-hand or refurbished computer.
You can create some quick wins to curb your digital footprint by providing employees with laptops instead of desktops, it consumes less electricity. Allow them to use it also for their personal use, it will decrease the "over-equipment" (doubling pro & personal devices) ratio, thus consuming less raw material and energy for over-production.
47%
of the digital world CO2e emissions are due to consumers equipments (25% due to data centers & 28% due to infrastructures).
(Ademe - Sept 2019)
50% less
carbon footprint by extending your computer life from 2 to 4 years, as 80% of carbon footprint comes from manufacturing.
(Ademe - Sept 2019)
Learn more about computer manufacturing process and its footprint.
Dell Factory Outlet provides refurbished Dell computers, monitors, desktops stations and workstations, servers and storage according to stocks.
Certified refurbished products are previously open/used products and come with a 1 year warranty. These products are submitted to a careful refurbishing process to achieve quality and performance standards.
To contact them, engage conversation through their "chat to buy" button.
ElectronicsCrazy is an online electronics marketplace in Singapore.
They deal in ten most popular categories including mobile phones, computers and laptops, cameras, network switches, smart power sockets...
They have a wide range of certified refurbished computers and other refurbished items.
PC Dreams restores second-hand computers, smartphones and other devices to put them back on the market.
To reduce electronic waste, they either refurbish the devices for sale, donate them to charities or recycle them with recycling partners.They also provide other services like logistics or online retail solutions.
Reebelo consists of a team of experienced people who have expertise in electronics and second-hand business.
Reebelo buy used electronics from business partners as well as from private individuals for their repair team to renew the electronics and test them, before they put them back on sale on their marketplace.
On top of that, Reebelo takes care of planting a tree for every device that they sell to make the world a greener and a cooler place.
For smartphones:
When choosing a model's storage capacity, go with a lowest option and (only if extra space is genuinely needed) sign up for cloud storage service.
You can create some quick wins to curb your digital footprint by reducing the number of smartphones: Adopt the "Bring Your Own Device" policy and replace pro and personal phones by a single one with reimbursment of bills, double SIM card, double number to protect personal privacy if need be...
~435,000 T
of mobile phones were discarded across the world in 2016, with the raw material costing approximately $10.7 billion (€9.53 billion).
(UN Environment Agency)
3.3 / person
number of connected devices owned by Singaporeans, with Smartphones being the most used device.
Reebelo consists of a team of experienced people who have expertise in electronics and second-hand business.
Reebelo buy used electronics from business partners as well as from private individuals for their repair team to renew the electronics and test them, before they put them back on sale on their marketplace.
On top of that, Reebelo takes care of planting a tree for every device that they sell to make the world a greener and a cooler place.
If you need to deploy your own servers, keep the following suggestions in mind:
If you wish to know more about hyperscale datacentres, click here!
Before deploying your own servers, consider either choosing a hosting company or deploying your own infrastructures.
To make this extremely simple (and some cases can prove us wrong here), bigger companies should always consider deploying hybrid infrastructures (public cloud for non-critical data and private cloud for highly valuable data). These hybrid infrastructures can be versatile: they can be internal and monitored by the company itself, but they can also use bulk offers from hosting companies for money-saving, strategic or other purposes. But in the end, huge companies with strong focus on data (banking, retail...) should always have a bigger part of their infrastructures owned by themselves.
However, for SME, going through hosting companies is quite the best because they would save money and time creating their own - partly useless (or at best under-used) - infrastructures. This is why choosing a green host could be a great incentive. Sustainable and definitely best for your resources! See our solution below "Choose a Green Host".
14%
is the projected percentage of ICT GHG emissions by 2040 on the worldwide 2016-level based GHGE.
(sciencedirect)
7450 kWh per year
is the estimated electricity consumption of a standard server. Based on the US Energy Information administration, this represents a total cost of 730 USD per year.
(ZDNet]
Hewlett Packard Enterprise is a worldwide company that provides efficient & sustainable datacentre IT services. Their commitment to sustainability encompasses "as-a-Service" solutions, which enable better agility, optimisation of computing power, reduction of overprovisioning...They also offer energy-efficient infrastructures and sustainable best practices for hardware deployment.
To contact them, you may also use their contact forms.
Chasing idle server storage is one kind of a challenge for companies, especially big firms, but reducing servers buidlings are one of the most important steps.
An idle server is basically not delivering any computing power. To be clear, an idle server is not to be confused with a server that is experiencing downtime. As a rule of thumb, if the server hasn't relayed information or computing services within the last six months, then it should be considered idle.
As a consequence, idle servers are a problem: they use energy for nothing and are expensive. Servers are using roughly between 150 and 200 watts per hour when they are idle (just under an active server). If we use the figure above, you can reckon that idle servers are extremely negative for the environment (and your wallet!).
Best way to chase down such servers is practically using dedicated solutions. Companies can deploy either DCiM (DataCentre Infrastructure Manager) that can provide an accurate overview of the datacentres' optimization/status, or PDU (Power Distribution Unit) that can display all real-time data related to the datacentre and help you make the right choices.
Keep in mind that any action abovementioned for servers is also valid for Virtual machines in software development in general. As they are server-like IT environment, all incentives here can be followed for their deployment and maintenance too.
If your company is contracting with third-party server provider, please have a look at below "Choose a green host" section!
< 30%
In typical deployments, server utilization is below 30%, but idle servers still consume 60% of their peak power draw.
(Research Gate)
~25%
of physical servers are zombies. 30% of virtual machines are also comatose.
(Jon Taylor and Jonathan Koomey Second Comatose Server Report)
Read more on chasing idle servers methodology
See howBarclays decommissioned 9000 servers in 2013 in this video and this paper.
This is a DIY - Do It Yourself Solution. If you want, you may ask a consultant to help you implement it.
Choosing a greener host is something on everybody's mind. If you want to go greener, check out the following criteria to make the right choice:
- Support and responsiveness - In cases like this you’ll appreciate clear communications from a support team, and having access to people with deep expertise – if you’re hosting something for someone, and their business relies on this hosting, it’s worth remembering that the real thing your customers are usually buying, is the ability to avoid disruptive changes to how they work. Local hosting providers should always be considered first (they will use more energy) but make sure the local hosting provider is as green as possible. Sometimes, non-domestic providers are greener than local ones. Here, pick yours and make the best decision depending on your own mindset.
- Pricing - Before going for the pricing, make sure you are absolutely certain of your needs and what you require. Once you know this, try to estimate the amount of storage/computing power you need to optimize your carbon footprint and money. Remember that if you go for a longer period of hosting, the costs per month are lower. Also, all hosting providers offer different kinds of plans. Browse the plans and make the best of their offers.
- Transparency - it’s worth thinking about how the servers you’re going to rely on are powered. If there isn’t an explicit statement from a given company about how they use renewable or sustainable power, it’s safest to assume the company is using a power from a mix of sources. If a company is making statements about green power, then they should be able to share details about how their power is considered “green”. In some cases they might source power directly, operating their own infrastructure, but in many cases, they’ll be buying special ‘renewable energy credits’ – tradable certificates allocated to companies that generate power from renewable sources.
- Green mindset - A greener mindset is always what hosting providers brag about. But careful here, some are green per se, others are just using carbon offsetting processes to "make their hosting green". The idea of paying money to reward green behaviour in a distant place does not sit well with everyone. Generally speaking, if you want to pay for renewable energy credits on the same grid where you are running your servers, you can, but it’s more expensive – just like how buying offsets in the same country where emissions from running servers take place will cost more. If you’re choosing a hosting company that relies on renewable energy credits, ask how & what kind of credits they use, and whether they buy them from the same grid where the infrastructure you use is. If you are not sure about their values, challenge them!
- Standards and contract notices - Before contracting with a hosting provider, read the details of engagement thoroughly. Keep in mind what leaving them would entail. To curb the risk, know that open standards and open source softwares make it easier to run the same kind of site with a different provider, compared to an entirely proprietary stack of technologies – although the trade off you increasingly tend to make now is about the end to end experience of needing something changed, having a developer or site builder work on it, show it in a staging area, then rolling out the changes to your site or product for your users. If you are developing a website on website editors (Wix, Webflow, ...), always remember you will not have the choice in the hosting company, they will make you go for their own provider/solution. And there are generally not green...
Always remember communication is key with your host. Feel free to confirm the information about those offsetting programs with them.
All companies can hold back before either choosing a hosting company or deploying their own infrastructures.
To make this extremely simple (and some cases can prove us wrong here), bigger companies could always consider deploying hybrid infrastructures (public cloud for non-critical data and private cloud for highly valuable data). These hybrid infrastructures can be versatile; they can be internal and monitored by the company itself, but they can also use bulk offers from hosting companies for money-saving, strategic or other purposes. But in the end, huge companies with strong focus on data (banking, retail, ...) should always have a bigger part of their infrastructures owned by themselves. Hyperscaled infrastructures could also be a great asset for them, which is detailed in this category "Choose Adequate Servers Solutions" above.
However, for SME, going through hosting companies is quite the best because they would save money and time creating their own - partly useless (or at best under-used) - infrastructures. This is why choosing a green host could be a great incentive. Sustainable and definitely best for your ressources!
2040 kg CO2e
is necessary to power an average website for a year, equivalent to driving an average new car for more than 10,000 miles.
(Tech Radar)
Learn more about hyperscale datacentres:
- How can Hyperscale datacentres help?
- Hyperscale data centres in East Asia
- The State of Datacentre Energy Use in 2018
Learn more about green hosting
This is a DIY - Do It Yourself Solution. If you want, you may ask a consultant to help you implement it.
Before going for brand new equipment, ask yourself: Do you really need one? If so, for performance or optimization, go ahead. But think twice.
If you need lighter/less performant devices, prefer secondhand.
• Utilize certified pre-owned products whenever possible in order to support legacy and/or non-revenue generating workloads and applications.
• For greater reliability, look for items that have been refurbished, either by the manufacturer or seller with warranty (12 months) so even if you do receive a faulty unit you should get a replacement. A refurbished device is one that has been restored to full working order and should work exactly the same as new.
To help you find the way in so many devices, see below a short recap of some devices' lifespan: see chart below.
These average lifespans are for information purposes only and show how long devices keep their highest performance level.
50% less
carbon footprint by extending your computer life from 2 to 4 years, as 80% of carbon footprint comes from manufacturing.
(Ademe - Sept 2019)
18 months
is the average use of a smartphone when actually its lifespan is 5 years.
Dell Factory Outlet provides refurbished Dell computers, monitors, desktops stations and workstations, servers and storage according to stocks.
Certified refurbished products are previously open/used products and come with a 1 year warranty. These products are submitted to a careful refurbishing process to achieve quality and performance standards.
To contact them, engage conversation through their "chat to buy" button.
ElectronicsCrazy is an online electronics marketplace in Singapore.
They deal in ten most popular categories including mobile phones, computers and laptops, cameras, network switches, smart power sockets...
They have a wide range of certified refurbished computers and other refurbished items.
PC Dreams restores second-hand computers, smartphones and other devices to put them back on the market.
To reduce electronic waste, they either refurbish the devices for sale, donate them to charities or recycle them with recycling partners.They also provide other services like logistics or online retail solutions.
Plurium Technologies is an alternative distributor of networking and IT equipment. They help companies to reduce the cost of their infrastructure by optimising the lifecycle of their hardware and by contributing actively to the circular economy.
They offer 2 different services both for companies with extra IT hardware to dispose, and for companies willing to reduce their carbon footprint and cost of ownership:
Reebelo consists of a team of experienced people who have expertise in electronics and second-hand business.
Reebelo buy used electronics from business partners as well as from private individuals for their repair team to renew the electronics and test them, before they put them back on sale on their marketplace.
On top of that, Reebelo takes care of planting a tree for every device that they sell to make the world a greener and a cooler place.
According to the UN Environment, 80% of a smartphone's carbon footprint occurs during manufacturing, 3% during transportation, and 16% during consumer use. The best way to decrease your electronics footprint is to keep your equipment as long as possible. The same applies for your desktops and laptops. Extend the life of your computer from 2 to 4 years will decrease by 50% its environmental footprint (Ademe Report).
Consider the whole lifespan of your equipments: while they are in your company and their after-life in the 2nd hand market. See above solution for the different lifespan of devices.
Before going any further, try to upcycle your hardware (reclaiming materials for use in new or better products) or any stranded resources (e.g. zombie servers and under-utilised assets). To do so, deploy a light IT Asset Management solution to keep track of your whole fleet and assets.
As a preliminary step, protect your materials: phone cases, covers, screen protectors, adapted computer bags... More than a nice-looking gadget, it's a way to make sure your device will not be easily damaged. To make your device last longer, avoid also extreme temperatures (don't let them near a window under full sun) and frequent charge levels.
Then, before changing any hardware, you should consider two actions:
Some Best Practices for the first step:
The second necessary step is to extend the shelf life of your IT materials (phones, computers, printers...) via leasing and evolutive material (RAM, batteries...).To do so, you have different options:
If you wish to change your equipments, consider their after-life and prefer the following incentives:
Keep in mind that before disassembling, you should conduct an assets audit and see what can be re-used, re-conditioned and what has to be recycled.
3.3 /person
number of connected devices owned by Singaporeans, with Smartphones being the most used device.
(Digital Influence Lab)
190 Kg CO2e
avoided by extending the lifetime of a single computer and monitor from 4 to 6 years.
(University of Edinburgh)
Engineering Good is a Singapore based charity that works to empower inclusivity for disadvantaged communities through sustainable engineering and technology solutions. We focus our efforts on supporting two key groups in the community:
1 – Persons with Disabilities (PWDs) through engineering Assistive Technology
2 – low-income families through digital inclusion initiatives
Computers Against COVID
Collects donated laptops/ devices and refurbish them and give out for free to disadvantaged communities
Remake IT Workshops
Repairing laptops and upcycling laptop parts
ReMakeIT is a workshop series delivered by Engineering Good volunteers that aims to address the problem of e-waste in a creative and practical way. You will learn how to turn e-waste parts into new devices and how you can prolong the life of your laptops. This workshop is free and open to all.
You can give away your old, slow laptop gathering dust at home to RE-PC Singapore donation event. Your laptop can become useful again and create educational opportunities for a less fortunate child.
Oudated laptops are donated to RE-PC during their events several times per year. Laptops are wiped, refurbished and provided with optimized OS for low energy consumption, before being given to homes with deserving children. They have already empowered the children of 105,000 families in Singapore with household incomes below S$1,500.
Reebelo consists of a team of experienced people who have expertise in electronics and second-hand business.
Reebelo buy used electronics from business partners as well as from private individuals for their repair team to renew the electronics and test them, before they put them back on sale on their marketplace.
On top of that, Reebelo takes care of planting a tree for every device that they sell to make the world a greener and a cooler place.
PC Dreams restores second-hand computers, smartphones and other devices to put them back on the market.
To reduce electronic waste, they either refurbish the devices for sale, donate them to charities or recycle them with recycling partners.They also provide other services like logistics or online retail solutions.
Plurium Technologies is an alternative distributor of networking and IT equipment. They help companies to reduce the cost of their infrastructure by optimising the lifecycle of their hardware and by contributing actively to the circular economy.
They offer 2 different services both for companies with extra IT hardware to dispose, and for companies willing to reduce their carbon footprint and cost of ownership:
If you wish to change your equipments, consider first their after-life and prefer the following incentives:
See our solution above "Extend equipments total lifespan: Repair, Keep longer, Find a new usage" for charities and intermediates.
Keep in mind that before disassembling, you should conduct an assets audit and see what can be re-used, re-conditionned and what has to be recycled.
For the hardwares that have to be recycled, do not forget that Electronic waste requires to be segregated from other waste, collected and treated properly, because they contain up to 60 different elements including toxic ones (lead, cadmium, mercury but also PVC, brominated flame retardants...) and rare earth elements (Neodymium, Terbium, Dysprosium, etc.).
Source: IntechOpen
The technologies used to recover those rare earth elements have been improved over time, as they represent a high resale value. Recycling would reduce the risks to harm the environment and the human health, and also the need to mine new raw materials.
You can contract directly with a specialised recycler to dispose of your equipment or bring it back to your suppliers: under the Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) on e-waste, suppliers of electronic goods must take back old products, and send them to a licensed recycler.
You may see here details of some e-recycling companies in Singapore.
You have personal e-waste to discard? Here is a list of all collection points available in Singapore.
60,000 tonnes
of e-waste generated in SG per year, equivalent to discarding ~70 mobile phones per person! (Towards Zero Waste)
19,9kg
annual e-waste generated per capita in Singapore. (Global ewaste)
Find the recycling plan relevant to your equipment:
- Dell
- HP
- HP Planet Partners Program
- Canon
- Epson
You may see here details of some e-recycling companies in Singapore.
For individuals, here is a list of all collection points available in Singapore.
Since July 1st 2021, NEA appointed Alba as E-waste PRS operator. PRS stands for : Producer Responsiblity Schemes. The ALBA Group, formed in 1968, has been operating such Producer Responsibility Schemes in countries such as Germany and Hong Kong. Please find here more information about this scheme. For all regulated e-waste, with a volume above 1 m3, you can arrange for free collection by Alba E-Waste.
Safe. Secure. Stewardship.
We offer e-waste recycling and data sanitization services to help clients dispose of them responsibly while keeping their data safe.
For e-waste recycling, our focus is on laptops, PC, servers, mobile and other ICT equipment.
We also offer secured consoles, paper shredding for confidential paper waste.
Metalo International has 10 years of experience in the electronic waste industry in Singapore.
They manage collection and trading of ferrous scrap metals, electrical components, electronics and other precious metals scrap. Besides, they also provide services to dismantle and dispose computer & other IT hardware and accessories (laptops, printers, monitors, used networking equipments, servers, etc.)
They have their own facilities to handle electronic waste or export to Thailand and Japan for refinery in an ethical way.
For individuals, they partner with Shell stations, to provide e-waste collection points for small devices. Click here to find one near your home.
Plurium Technologies is an alternative distributor of networking and IT equipment. They help companies to reduce the cost of their infrastructure by optimising the lifecycle of their hardware and by contributing actively to the circular economy.
They offer 2 different services both for companies with extra IT hardware to dispose, and for companies willing to reduce their carbon footprint and cost of ownership:
TES is a trusted leader for technology deployment, recovery, remarketing, and recycling since 2005.
They provide IT Lifecycle Services, commissioning, deployment, retirement of Information Technology (IT) assets, refurbishing and remarketing of used technology assets to maximize cash recovery potential.
In March 2021, they opened a facility to recycle Lithium-ion batteries in Singapore, with a daily recycling capacity of up to 14 tonnes / day.
The « green journey » may feel overwhelming sometimes, but you are not alone.
Our Buddies have tried, succeeded, failed to implement change in their companies. They share their experience so you can learn, take shortcuts, get inspired and ask questions.
Everybody can become a Buddy and give back to the community; if you are keen, get in touch with us.
I am Thibaut, French bald since 26 & bold since forever! Right now, I am a 1st time entrepreneur in the making.
I come from an IT & software agency background so deeply into B2B and old-fashioned processes. I came to realize that sustainability cannot be only about consumers and half-measures. I also realized IT Sustainability was much underrated and not understood by most companies. It came quite as a surprise for me since I always considered IT Sustainability as one of the best ways to merge both ROI & Sustainability to make the latter sound acceptable, actionable, and realistic. Having seen that, I wanted to make a change in my own way.
My dedication came from the desire to be able to look my future kids in the eye and tell them that I tried to make the world a better place.
I am also drawn to uncommon & less popular causes, which is why e-waste caught my attention. While it’s not as “buzzy” as plastic waste or consumer recycling, it has the potential to have a greater impact, especially in Asia.
I started my career as a mechanical engineer for 5 years and joined TayPaper Recycling in 2018. Tay Paper Recycling has grown from an informal scrap dealer to now a leading paper focused recycling company in Singapore. On top of just recycling, we also offer confidential data disposal services to help clients comply with PDPA, GDPR and recycle at the same time. I am now working at KGS, an e-waste and data sanitization company.
I have been working in Asia for the past 12 years (Shanghai, Hong Kong and Singapore since 2014) within the digital and technology space.
I have founded and run several companies in different sectors such as IT Consulting, Education, and the F&B business.
I am passionate about how to use technology as a force for good.