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Educating Young People about Sustainable Technology

Hard Drive Teardown Workshops

Background

With the escalating climate crisis and an educational curriculum that is still in the process of incorporating sustainability and environmental sciences, there is an established need for the green skills training of young people.

The Challenge

According to a 2023 report only 1 in 8 workers have one or more green skills and yet the number of hires requiring these skills has grown by 15% between 2022 and 2023. The UK specifically is estimated to need 200,000 workers to bridge the ‘green skills gap’ in order for us to achieve our Net Zero goals.

In 2019 Techbuyer pledged to spend 5,000 hours towards educating young people in sustainable digital practices. Our aim is to persuade a generation that are used to replacing their tech every few years, to instead reuse and repair it.

Gloabal Goal 4: Quality EducationGloabal Goal 4: Quality Education

“I think it was interesting to learn more about the stuff that runs our life but that we don’t really think of and where it all comes from”

Educating young people on Sustainable Technology

Green skills can be defined as “knowledge, abilities, values and attitudes needed to live in, develop and support a society which reduces the impact of human activity on the environment”

To meet our commitments to the UN SDG target, Techbuyer have taken part in, or run various events to engage and educate young people in Sustainable IT, adding to their repertoire of green skills.

In June 2024 we ran three workshops at the Green Employer Conference hosted by New College Pontefract. The workshops consisted of 45-minute sessions intended to encourage young people to appreciate existing technology, learn what it is made of and look at ways to keep it out of landfill. In these sessions we assisted students in dismantling hard drives, with the aim of helping them to understand just how amazing even the most plain looking equipment can be.

Later, on the 5th December 2024 we took our Hard Drive Teardowns to the CGI Sustainability Careers Festival an event at the London Stadium attended by over 2,000 children and young people. Due to high demand we increased our allocation from 2 to 3 workshops providing Green Tech education to around 90 pupils from schools around the London area.

Then, in January 2025 members of Techbuyer’s Sustainability Committee took the workshop materials to the local Brigades at Harrogate Methodist church. This activity day was attended by 3 separate groups of boys and girls with ages ranging from 4 to 17 years old. For each group the focus and detail of the content was shifted to keep our audience engaged and our content age appropriate.

The sessions concluded with an introduction to the circular economy and how we can apply it to the way we consume technology going forward: Could you donate your technology to charity? Have you looked at repairing your broken devices or buying refurbished laptops and phones?

Only 1 in 8 workers have 1 or more green skills despite rising demands in this area

“I hadn’t really thought about the components before ... it just goes to show how much can be reused”

A young student dismantles the components of a hard driveA young student dismantles the components of a hard drive

The UK is estimated to need 2000,000 workers to bridge the green skills gap in order to achieve our Net Zero goals

Success Stories

As well as contributing a total of 154 hours towards our SDG target for educating young people, our workshops have received positive feedback from the students and teachers.

We've created a Tech Workshop Leaflet, that can be used for future events, or as a teaching resource.

Showing young students what elements are contained in a Hard Drive at the CGI Sustainability Careers Festival event a the London StadiumShowing young students what elements are contained in a Hard Drive at the CGI Sustainability Careers Festival event a the London Stadium