World economic forum 2023 figures show that 53.6m metric tons of e-waste is being produced every year worldwide, 83% of which isn’t collected. This is a huge, missed opportunity for the circular economy. However, HPE is ahead of the curve, according to Ray McGann, Managing Director Hewlett Packard Enterprise Ireland, with its technology renewal centres in Scotland and Andover, Massachusetts.
IT tech is increasingly being leased and expenditure is growing fast. It increased by 36.9% in the first quarter of 2024 for HPE. When customers are renting IT tech, not buying it, this produces a significant footprint. Sometimes customers keep the equipment, or they extend the lease, or they buy it but then don’t require the asset anymore. Asset upcycling is one of the big inflows in the facility. The level of reintroduction into the market is significant.
On the client side, there are lots of early 1990s assets and storage network devices which come in to be refurbished – the overall average is mid-1980s. Some assets, such as components, desk tops and hard drives facilitate a very quick turnaround. Others are from legacy systems which go back around 25 years. For some applications or ERP systems that inherently are very valuable, clients want to retain the original software as much as possible.
The Scottish facility takes in 3 million pieces of unwanted IT equipment every year, which is worth 35 million pounds and weighs 15,875 metric tons – for context that is over 370 mid-size jet airliners. Over 90% is refurbished and sent for reuse and the rest is recycled. The sister facility in Andover, Massachusetts, processed over 9 million assets this year.
The objective is that nothing that is managed from the HPE facilities in Scotland and Andover ends up in landfill. Anything non-functional and unreliable, which can’t be sold in the open market, goes into recycling for the recovery of plastics and metals. HPE has an annual licence with the Scottish EPA, for the quantity of items that can be shipped into Europe from the UK. It’s a very controlled and well-governed process.
Source: Ti Insight / Foundation for Future Supply Chain
Author: Julia Swales
