Techbuyer's Global Goals

In October 2020, Techbuyer set nine targets across three of the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Setting these targets was a rallying cry for our staff to band together to achieve expansive goals that helped us make an impact as a business. The aim of these targets: make measurable, beneficial change to improve our health, educate the next generation, and promote responsible consumption.

These 9 targets were:

  • Achieve £2.5 million savings for healthcare organisations
  • Achieve 15,000 active hours for our colleagues and communities' health and wellbeing
  • Establish long-term relationships with 35 health and wellbeing charities
  • Achieve £3 million savings for educational institutions
  • Contribute 5,000 hours to the education of young people about sustainable digital practices
  • Donate 100,000 kilos of technology to educational bodies around the world
  • Divert 4 million kilos of technology from landfill
  • Promote sustainable technology to 5,000 organisations
  • Donate 1,500 cubic feet of waste as a resource

How Well Did We Do Against These Targets?

Of the nine total targets, we successfully achieved five. With our staff making full use of the facilities across Hornbeam Park, the business park in which our headquarters are located, we more than doubled our target of 15,000 active hours. We also massively overachieved in our target to save £3 million for our customers investing in IT for educational bodies – hitting a million pounds over target.

Another of the remaining three targets achieved was diverting four million kilos of technology from landfill. Thanks to our work done in resource reclamation and our commitment to the circular economy, this was hit over a year ahead of our 2025 target.

Attending conferences and events nationwide saw us hit our target of promoting sustainable technology to over 5,000 organisations, including our attendance at the Data Centre Awards and our involvement in the international CEDaCI project.

Rounding up our successes, we managed to donate over 1,500 cubic feet of packaging waste, such as polyethylene foams and bubble wrap from our incoming packaging to local creative arts projects – particularly Harrogate based Cone Exchange.

Despite achieving some positive results, we found reaching some of the goals more challenging – although we logged over 1,150 hours of time spent educating young people on sustainable digital practices in the final year, we fell short of our five-year target of 5,000 hours. This was due in part to the school shutdowns during the pandemic.

What are the New Goals and Why Did We Choose Them?

Five years later, after reflecting on the strengths and shortcomings of our Global Goals project, we have decided to set eight new targets to be achieved by 2030.

We sent out a questionnaire to our employees asking about the goals they felt strongly about, the change they wanted to see and what they thought went well over the last five years. Using the findings, we constructed new targets to reflect the interests of our workforce. Based on this feedback, we decided to stretch some of our previous targets, but also add some new ones.

The New Targets for 2030 are:

  • Achieve an additional £1 million in savings for Healthcare Organisations
  • Maintain long term relationships with 10 new health and wellbeing charities
  • Donate an additional 70,000 kg of Technology to education bodies worldwide
  • Dedicate an additional 700 hours to educating young people about sustainable digital practices
  • Divert an additional 5 million kilos from landfill
  • Establish five high resource recovery partnerships
  • Achieve 1,000 volunteering hours
  • Provide STEM training to 500 young people from non-typical backgrounds

With these changes in place, we are excited to see the positive difference we can make in the next five years!

What are Our Plans to Achieve These Goals?

Techbuyer provides two days of paid volunteering per year for all staff. In order to increase uptake of this, we are including a greater selection of volunteering opportunities organised by our internal charities committee.

We have already set up volunteer groups for two of our chosen charities at Lineham Farm and the Yorkshire Dales Millennium Trust, giving staff the opportunity to assist in outdoor projects that help local communities.

Our charities committee is also working hard to coordinate donations, fundraising and volunteer opportunities for our staff, in order to create lasting partnerships with our chosen health and wellbeing charities.

Thanks to our previous collaboration with the York and North Yorkshire combined authority, we have been able to list ourselves on the YNY careers hub. This portal allows organisations to list their educational offerings in a directory for local schools to view. In the month since joining the portal Techbuyer has already been invited to, and subsequently attended, a careers event at a local school – with many more to come. These opportunities will assist with our goals to educate young people and provide STEM training.

Techbuyer will continue to work with our partner charities, ReUsing IT, IT Schools Africa and the Turing Trust to deliver refurbished equipment to those that need it most across the UK, Africa and Ukraine. We also continue to maintain a ReUsing IT station in our warehouse to allow staff to generously use their spare weekend time to process hardware donations.

Engagement in the goals is key as always and we are looking to increase our internal communication on SDG progress, celebrating the wins of our employees through our internal and external communications.