According to the UN Environment, 80% of a smartphone's carbon footprint occurs during manufacturing, 3% during transportation, and 16% during consumer use. The best way to decrease your electronics footprint is to keep your equipment as long as possible. The same applies for your desktops and laptops. Extend the life of your computer from 2 to 4 years will decrease by 50% its environmental footprint (Ademe Report).
Consider the whole lifespan of your equipments: while they are in your company and their after-life in the 2nd hand market. See above solution for the different lifespan of devices.
Before going any further, try to upcycle your hardware (reclaiming materials for use in new or better products) or any stranded resources (e.g. zombie servers and under-utilised assets). To do so, deploy a light IT Asset Management solution to keep track of your whole fleet and assets.
As a preliminary step, protect your materials: phone cases, covers, screen protectors, adapted computer bags... More than a nice-looking gadget, it's a way to make sure your device will not be easily damaged. To make your device last longer, avoid also extreme temperatures (don't let them near a window under full sun) and frequent charge levels.
Then, before changing any hardware, you should consider two actions:
Some Best Practices for the first step:
The second necessary step is to extend the shelf life of your IT materials (phones, computers, printers...) via leasing and evolutive material (RAM, batteries...).To do so, you have different options:
If you wish to change your equipments, consider their after-life and prefer the following incentives:
Keep in mind that before disassembling, you should conduct an assets audit and see what can be re-used, re-conditioned and what has to be recycled.
3.3 /person
number of connected devices owned by Singaporeans, with Smartphones being the most used device.
(Digital Influence Lab)
190 Kg CO2e
avoided by extending the lifetime of a single computer and monitor from 4 to 6 years.
(University of Edinburgh)
Engineering Good is a Singapore based charity that works to empower inclusivity for disadvantaged communities through sustainable engineering and technology solutions. We focus our efforts on supporting two key groups in the community:
1 – Persons with Disabilities (PWDs) through engineering Assistive Technology
2 – low-income families through digital inclusion initiatives
Computers Against COVID
Collects donated laptops/ devices and refurbish them and give out for free to disadvantaged communities
Remake IT Workshops
Repairing laptops and upcycling laptop parts
ReMakeIT is a workshop series delivered by Engineering Good volunteers that aims to address the problem of e-waste in a creative and practical way. You will learn how to turn e-waste parts into new devices and how you can prolong the life of your laptops. This workshop is free and open to all.
You can give away your old, slow laptop gathering dust at home to RE-PC Singapore donation event. Your laptop can become useful again and create educational opportunities for a less fortunate child.
Oudated laptops are donated to RE-PC during their events several times per year. Laptops are wiped, refurbished and provided with optimized OS for low energy consumption, before being given to homes with deserving children. They have already empowered the children of 105,000 families in Singapore with household incomes below S$1,500.
Reebelo consists of a team of experienced people who have expertise in electronics and second-hand business.
Reebelo buy used electronics from business partners as well as from private individuals for their repair team to renew the electronics and test them, before they put them back on sale on their marketplace.
On top of that, Reebelo takes care of planting a tree for every device that they sell to make the world a greener and a cooler place.
PC Dreams restores second-hand computers, smartphones and other devices to put them back on the market.
To reduce electronic waste, they either refurbish the devices for sale, donate them to charities or recycle them with recycling partners.They also provide other services like logistics or online retail solutions.
Plurium Technologies is an alternative distributor of networking and IT equipment. They help companies to reduce the cost of their infrastructure by optimising the lifecycle of their hardware and by contributing actively to the circular economy.
They offer 2 different services both for companies with extra IT hardware to dispose, and for companies willing to reduce their carbon footprint and cost of ownership:
