Building out your Sustainability Roadmap

So, you’ve read about the importance of sustainability in relation to your IT systems and device usage and want to know how to create a roadmap and strategy to reduce your carbon footprint.

In this blog, we’ll be sharing the kinds of actions that businesses across all industries can and should be focusing on as part of their sustainability strategies – starting with a road map which outlines where they are now and where they should be going.

The time for sustainability is now

The environment is suffering at the hands of increased infrastructure, the growth of our digital reliance, and the modern desire to constantly upgrade devices and technology products with little regard for the carbon footprint of each device we throw away.

Without significant change, the growing reliance on data centres and new devices will continue to fuel out growing energy consumption and carbon footprint to levels that become debilitating for communities and environments overseas – but that’s not all.

Far too many businesses and organisations are working under what’s called a carbon neutral strategy as opposed to striving to be carbon net zero. While the former sees businesses offsetting their carbon footprint, the latter is the strategy and roadmap through which businesses seek to genuinely cut their carbon producing activities and change their operational structure accordingly.

To look at hardware specifically, when devices are purchased, used, and then thrown away without being recycled, it is not enough to simply throw funding at an environmental charity that offsets and counterbalances the negative impact of your action. A carbon net zero strategy and roadmap sees that business change its behaviour to cut down on its e-waste – with recycling and reusing both core principles in this journey to change. ?

In this blog, we share some of the steps that your business needs to take to both secure a lower carbon footprint and enhance its sustainable strategy.

Creating a roadmap for sustainability

To become a more sustainable organisation in terms of IT usage and hardware consumption, you must understand the lifecycle of every device and technological piece of hardware that your company employs.

Most businesses and organisations are not aware that more than half of the energy consumption that every device will use in its entire lifecycle is wasted during the manufacturing process. Every time your business upgrades a piece of technology, it continues to feed the demand for such energy to be used and wasted – especially when hardware is produced from vendors who do not prioritise sustainability as one of their own values.

MAKE A CHANGE… Partner with IT vendors and suppliers who operate their own sustainable strategies, who only sell and supply hardware that is made under a green initiative banner, and who encourage businesses like yours to consider recycling unwanted devices.

From there, your roadmap needs to move into the management and usage of each device and piece of IT infrastructure within your business. Managing the conditions of your inhouse data centre can make a huge difference to your energy output – as can educating your team on how to decrease their own carbon footprint with more efficient energy use.

MAKE A CHANGE… Create team initiatives which encourage individual workers to recognise their own carbon footprint and make small changes to decrease it.

Finally, make a plan for recycling and disposal of unwanted and outdated devices and hardware – whether that means elongating the lifecycle and usability of a single device, or finding an organisation which will wipe and renovate your unwanted pieces into usable devices for charitable or secondary buyer usage.

How to ensure that the road remains clear in the future

Changing entire company behaviours and attitudes is only possible with the support of stakeholders at all levels of the organisation. As a result, as part of a comprehensive and effective strategy, you must define your KPIs, erect a series of goalposts for different teams to achieve, and ensure that representatives are in place at every level of the organisation to monitor and track individual team progress.

Not every sustainability strategy will apply to every business. Some use IT in different ways to others, creating the need for a tailored plan with effective management, advice, and the hardware and software support to bring it to life. Here at Quantum IT Distribution, we work directly with clients to match their user needs and business goals with the right hardware that will boost their business and enhance their sustainability goals.

And with the right focus on sustainability as well as business success, your business horizon looks set to include:

·?Better customer satisfaction

·?A most cost-efficient way of working

·?Stable company values

·?A higher ESG score

·?Full-team support at every level

Reach out to us directly to find out more about how we could support you in ticking all of those boxes and more.