Green Careers | Delivering Lessons on Sustainable Technology

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. 

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 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. 

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?  

Success Stories

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

As well as contributing 62 hours towards our SDG target for educating young people, our workshop received positive feedback from the students and teachers, rating our workshop sessions ten out of ten. 

We have also banked the content to be used for future events, or as a teaching resource. It can be found here.