Firms share the CO2 benefits of reuse

Colin Staub

5 years ago

A recent report suggests that moves toward refurbishment and reuse in the data center sector could reduce greenhouse gas impacts by as much as 24% or more. | Maximumm/Shutterstock

ITAD service providers are increasingly communicating the carbon impact of refurbishing electronics, recent announcements indicate.

Blancco, a company providing data erasure products, on May 12 rolled out a carbon credit calculator for IT assets, in partnership with Carbon Neutral Technology Corp., an ITAD company that offers verified carbon credits to its asset suppliers.

With the new tool, called the Data Erasure Carbon Credits Calculator, users provide details about their equipment and are presented with an estimated number of carbon credits they would receive if they sold the assets for reuse rather than mechanical recycling.

The concept of carbon credit is for an organization to calculate where it is reducing or avoiding carbon output, even if it has carbon emissions in other areas. Carbon credits are used to communicate those reductions and “offset” other emissions.

In a release, Blancco and Carbon Neutral Technology Corp. said the carbon credit calculator “will encourage more companies to consider supporting reuse and responsible recycling of their old IT assets rather than adding them to landfills.”

Also on May 12, data center decommissioning firm ITRenew published a report highlighting the carbon-reduction benefits of refurbishment and reuse in the data center sector.

The company’s Financial & Sustainability Case for Circulatory report presents a case for why the data center industry should move toward a business model that maximizes the life of hardware through reuse.

Beyond financial savings, such a shift can “decrease the greenhouse gas impact (measured in equivalent carbon dioxide, or CO2e) of the data center industry by as much as 24% or more,” the report found.

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