Intelligent CIO Europe Issue 78 | Page 40

FEATURE : GREEN TECHNOLOGY
plant around 56 million trees every year , just to cancel out the carbon cost of all those new laptops . To put that in perspective , there ’ s estimated to be around 3 billion trees currently in the UK today . Framed this way , it ’ s easy to see why carbon offsetting is severely limited in its capacity to cancel out the ongoing cost of replacing , let alone powering , the UK ’ s IT infrastructure .
Could remanufacturing be a silver bullet ?
Not many people realise that by far the most carbonintensive part of a laptop ’ s life is when it ’ s being made . More than 75 % of a laptop ’ s carbon footprint is attributed to the manufacturing process , which makes how we source them , and how long we keep them , immensely important .

ACHIEVING NET ZERO IS NOW A TOP PRIORITY FOR A GROWING NUMBER OF UK BUSINESSES , BUT THE ROAD TO CARBON NEUTRALITY IS LITTERED WITH OBSTACLES , DIFFICULT DECISIONS AND THE ODD WRONG TURN .

University to conduct a full life cycle analysis of our remanufactured laptops and found that they produce over 15x less CO 2 during production compared to an average new laptop .
That means the decision to buy a remanufactured laptop cuts the carbon cost of acquiring each device down from 331kg to just 15kg . That makes the maths very different ; 63,000 metric tons of CO 2 every year . If we could as a country rethink the way we buy
Sustainable IT , and in particular Circular Computing , considers the entire life cycle of IT products , ensuring responsible sourcing of materials and ethical manufacturing practices . As one of the global leaders in laptop remanufacturing , Circular Computing sets the gold standard for providing devices that look like new , work like new and cost less , both financially and environmentally . Last year , we asked Cranfield
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