Steps to Being an Environmentally Sustainable Business

Techbuyer is lucky; we have a sustainable business model. Successful for over 15 years in product life extension, with strong growth year on year, we are an excellent example of how circular economy can be profitable in the IT sector. However, any organisation can have sustainable operations and support sustainable development. These are the lessons we have learned over the last five years that can be picked up, replicated or modified by any small and medium sized business.

Look for what you can do better

When we first started reading about the Circular Economy, starting with Waste to Wealth that came out in 2015, we were interested in finding out how different businesses applied circular economy thinking to their operations. We read about coffee shop that collected grounds for use in feeding cows that later produced milk for the café. We shared stories of jeans companies that provided a rental option to customers, with new jeans delivered on subscription which were made from the shredded fibre of older pairs. We also explored a circular exchange for waste materials that was trialled in Australia, where polystyrene balls from excess packaging was delivered to a building company wanting to make lighter weight cement for modular design.

Of course, none of these things actually gave us solutions to our problems on waste, but they did open us to a new way of thinking. They also gave us confidence in developing our own circular solutions to our operations. We started small - contacting charities who could use some of the non-recyclable waste that came into the offices to create craft kits – then we built up to more ambitious projects. We focused on repair and reuse as much as possible, dedicating time and resources to pulling more equipment out of the recycling bin and putting it back on the shelves.

Take risks to develop solutions

Anyone who is close to a part of the business that has waste or damage understands the issues around it.  As an example, it was the Goods Out department that pushed for meetings on microbeads. However, understanding the issues does not always mean there is an answer. Fully recyclable and recycled hard-wearing packaging is quite an ambitious goal for an IT company, just as solar panel installation is a challenge on a rented building with reluctant landlord and a delicate roof. Sometimes you have to wait for market conditions to change before you have any success and sometimes you need to develop your own solutions.

We have done this in a number of ways, all of which have taken patience, determination and a willingness to partner others. Many solutions to issues around sustainability are in development, so businesses need to be ready to explore numerous options, trial them and work with the supplier over an extended period. At other times, businesses will need to invest in finding their own solutions to problems faced with research and development. This involves time, money and creativity when working in a niche sector but is worthwhile in a whole range of ways.

Develop innovative approaches

The most famous example of Techbuyer’s research and development is the Knowledge Transfer Project carried out with the University of East London. Thousands of hours of benchmarking, years of experience on server configurations developed the world’s first tool to accurately measure the energy efficiency of multiple makes, models, generations and configurations of servers. The project was named one of the top 3 in 800 Innovate UK co-sponsored projects for that year and the company that sprung from it is multiple award winning and changing the data centre sector approach to hardware refresh.

Less well-known examples come from the Techbuyer repairs department and include the 3D printing of plastic parts that are thrown away after a server’s first use and needed to deliver a refurbished machine to second use in pristine condition. The small parts like clips and CPU covers are manufactured on site from CAD designs developed in-house. Created using recyclable plastic that is less brittle and more robust than some of the original alternatives, each design can be modified according to make and adapted just as the originals would be with successive generations. This small scale manufacture enables tonnes of servers to be put back into effective reuse with no risk of damage in transit, and is a huge enabler for more circular practice.

Other enablers are the in-house software we have developed on repairs, the training library the company has maintained over multiple generations of new hardware and the work we are beginning on supporting higher value recycling. Rather than sell for shredding and melting, we actively seek out partners that are recovering multiple materials at one time with technologies like pyrolysis, bioleaching and heat reuse.     

Identify, measure, improve, repeat

This approach is far from revolutionary when it comes to business improvement plans. If you build in an awareness of environmental sustainability issues, it becomes a very powerful tool. Companies who are successful at integrating sustainability risk management into their operations start by understanding the sustainability risks that are appropriate to them. They need to identify the impacts they have on the environment at all stages of operation and work out either how to minimise these impacts or redesign to create a net positive.

Putting “sustainability frameworks” into a search engine can be daunting if you are a smaller company. A lot of the suggestions (Global Reporting Index; Sustainability Accounting Standards Board, Carbon Disclosure Project) are designed for large, listed companies with large reporting resources. A more accessible approach is to identify the programmes that make things simpler.

On creating positive stretch, we find support of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) very useful. Selecting goals that work for our sector, company and stakeholders and introducing our own targets on the back of this has been a great way to amplify some of the good we do. Aligning with Quality Education and Good Health and Wellbeing as well as Sustainable Consumption and Production means that we are engaged in activities that have a social as well as environmental benefit. We have found that has helped bring us together as a community as well as attract new talent.

When it comes to mitigating climate impact, a science-based targets approach that begins with direct emissions (scope 1) and electricity usage (scope 2) has been a great place to start. Time spent with local climate change coalitions and net zero groups helped educate us on the key issues, statistics and ways we could begin the journey. There is a wealth of information online about this from the UN Global Compact as well as the Greenhouse Gas Protocol.

Building a culture of environmental awareness

The key benefit of frameworks is that they keep everyone on the same page and heading in the right direction. Carbon Footprint, Net Zero and the UN SDGs are now well-known, clear methods of advertising progress to staff, customers and the market. We have partnered these with an ISO 14001 management system that tracks continuous improvement on waste management and renewable supply. As this is mostly a management tool, we have partnered the ISO with clear, shared ethics on what “good” looks like at the company. In simple terms, we hate waste and encourage anyone in the company that tries to eliminate it.

For the sales teams that might translate into not selling customers equipment they don’t need. For Interact, it is about removing unnecessary machines from a server estate. In our technical facility, it means pulling things away from shredding and melting down; repair and reuse is one priority and increased material recovery is another.  For our support functions, it means triaging our office waste, putting in light sensors and working out the best options for our desk hardware.

Having all of this going on means that Techbuyer is a more exciting place to work, which is a great motivator in attracting new staff and keeping them engaged with the company.