From E-waste to Positive Impact | Chat with Brian Rear

Brian Rear, Chapter Lead in ASB’s infrastructure services team, is a technology guru by day and environmental advocate by night, passionate about the small things people can do daily to be more sustainable. He has worked in technology at ASB for 23 years, starting in the Telephony and Network team and is now part of a team of extremely dedicated and talented engineers who keep ASB’s systems running. With Earth Day tomorrow, we sat down with Brian and asked him a few questions on how we recycle our out-of-date technology.

I am currently a Chapter Lead in the infrastructure services team, and one of my primary responsibilities is the operational management of ASB’s data centres. Like all businesses, we are always finding ways to improve our technology offering and better serve the needs of our people and customers.

Due to our scale, it’s important we do everything possible to limit the environmental impact of any waste we produce and over the years we have had great programmes in place to ensure our front-line assets, PC’s, monitors, phones, printers, and screens are disposed of properly. Where we can, the assets are donated to be reused by other organisations, otherwise they are broken down and recyclable components are removed, to minimise the amount going to landfill.

Hardware in our data centres is a little different. Once removed, hardware and cabling has no real commercial value and is not viable for our existing recycling partners to take. From a cost perspective, it would be easiest for us to dump this waste, however from an environmental perspective this is unacceptable. Considering this, over the past 15 years the Data Centre team has worked to ensure all hardware being removed from our sites is sent for recycling, with less than 5% of what’s removed ending up in landfill.

Since we manage this recycling process internally, we get money back for the hardware that is sent for scrap. This has allowed us to run what we call the ‘cable fund’, and all the money we receive back is donated to charitable causes. Rather than just donating cash, we work with the charities to donate goods that give the most value to the people they support. For example, we give televisions to Starship Hospital for the parent and patient lounges, we give iPads, printers and tablets to Hearing House for its onsite kindergarten and we donate flippers and rescue tubes to Surf Lifesaving NZ.

ASB has always encouraged its people to contribute to the community because it’s the right thing to do, and I have been lucky over the years that my senior managers have given me their full support to contribute in this way. Helping people and fixing issues has always been a big focus for me, making someone else’s day is always rewarding.

Until now not many people knew about this initiative, and it has really been about making a positive contribution to our planet. I hope this story encourages those reading to look for their own opportunity to make a difference.

More on ASB’s Sustainability journey on this page .