A Bright Future with the EAUC

One of our last acts of 2018 was to join the Environmental Association of Universities and Colleges as a company member. The goals of the organisation – finding a way towards a more affordable, less wasteful approach – align very much with our own as a quality refurbishment specialist. The partnership is a great opportunity for us to showcase our low cost, environmentally sustainable business lines, as well as to learn how our business operations can improve along the same lines.  

Sustainable ICT

Techbuyer is an attractive product offer for the University market. We provide low cost, high quality equipment for servers, storage and networking, all of which are a significant proportion of any University’s IT budget. Components fail from time to time, so having a supplier that can deliver quickly on orders large and small is invaluable to University IT Managers managing ever increasing network sizes and traffic speeds. When you factor into this that we buy redundant IT and data wipe it to military standards, the budget savings become very attractive indeed.

Resource efficiency and waste

Added into this are the benefits to the planet in terms of materials savings. Servers, storage and networking contain a large amount of steel and aluminium, which are two of the top five worse industrial greenhouse gas emission culprits. In addition, the growing amount of e-waste sent to landfill has a harmful effect on public health according to this report from the UN. So opting to deliver older products into the use cycle and buy replacements from existing component stocks has huge environmental benefit. 

Community and Public Engagement

Community engagement has been part of Techbuyer’s DNA from the very earliest days and sustainability issues are as big a part of that as charity fundraising and support of our local voluntary organisations. We run recycling campaigns as part of WRAP recycle week that showcase all the many ways a company like ours can contribute towards cutting down on the waste stream with initiatives like onsite cardboard and plastic bailers and culture change like reusable plastic bottles for our staff.

This month, we began a partnership with a local organisation who specialises in putting non-recyclable waste to good use in skills training and supplies for local schools. The Cone Exchange in Harrogate is going to begin weekly pick-ups from our warehouse of foam packaging. This will be transformed by adults with learning difficulties into decorations for sale in the craft shop on site, which in turn raises money for local charities. This is such a wonderful idea that we as employees are getting in on the act too. The organisation has given us a list of waste items like used stamps and washing up bottle lids, which charities can use to generate cash returns.

It is ideas and partnerships like these that allow us as a company to get better at minimising resource waste and develop more sustainable business practice. We are hoping our involvement with an organisation like the EAUC can help us with this journey. As our CEO Kevin Towers said in our latest Parliamentary Review entry, “Growth is good but sustainable growth is better”. It is up to us as a species to find the best way of doing that… together.