Yorkshire & Humberside: Business Strategies for Circular Economy

Where can local businesses start with their Circular Economy journey?  

Astrid Wynne Head of Sustainability at Techbuyer, and chartered Environmentalist, explored this in an IEMA webinar on Business Strategies for the Circular Economy.  

The event, hosted on the 10th May, also featured Anne Velenturf; a Senior Research fellow in Circular Economies at the University of Leeds, and Andy Trainor; Managing Director of Shed Rides, an electric bike company. 

Anne began the event with an introduction to the concept of Sustainable Circular Economies along with an explanation of the benefits and how companies could get started; including which tools could be used to assess the circularity of a business. 

Astrid then presented about the work that Techbuyer and Interact are doing to contribute to the circular economy within the IT industry. 
Andy finished the webinar with a talk explaining the circular business model and the opportunities and challenges associated with operating his business - Shed Rides. 

IEMA members can watch the webinar in full here. 

Astrid’s talk covered a variety of topics including: 

• The hidden cost of digital: how the growing data centre industry contributes to global GHG emissions; for example using a phone is only half the story when your data comes from data centres!
•  Embodied carbon in the production of digital hardware, with particular emphasis on the amount of air miles required in the manufacture of electronics.  
• How we can maintain a circular economy by focusing on reuse as a priority where possible and the measures that can be taken before using recycling as a last resort. For example:  
• Hardware can be redeployed within an organisation or have its components harvested and reused as a more circular alternative to simply recycling. 
• How Techbuyer’s sister company Interact proves that component level upgrades and server optimisation are a preferable option (cost and emissions wise) to simply upgrading.