Sustainability has become a given in most industries, but a Nordic survey commissioned by Lenovo reveals that IT departments have fallen behind in this development. The survey shows that IT staff are largely unaware of the emissions caused by their IT products and do not know how to reduce their climate footprint.
Lenovo, together with YouGov, produced the study The state of Nordic sustainability, which surveyed IT managers and other IT professionals across the four Nordic countries to examine their work on IT-related sustainability. The findings highlight several challenges, including a lack of refurbishment of IT equipment and a general lack of knowledge about the carbon emissions associated with both IT products and IT departments’ operations.
IT staff lack awareness about the importance of refurbishment
Only 48 percent of the surveyed IT staff in Sweden send their used IT equipment for refurbishment — meaning the equipment is cleaned, repaired, and prepared for reuse. By contrast, 82 percent say they return bottles and cans for recycling. The fact that IT equipment such as computers, tablets and smartphones can be recycled and reused should be as obvious today as recycling bottles and cans. If IT equipment is not recycled or handled properly, it risks releasing environmental toxins while recyclable materials are wasted.
“IT departments need to be informed about how to make use of their consumed IT equipment — this should be basic knowledge today,” explains Christer Eklund, Country Manager for Sweden at Lenovo. Lenovo runs a take-back and reuse program for its products, allowing customers to return any Lenovo device for recycling. This enables greater circularity by manufacturing new IT equipment that contains a significant share of refurbished material recovered from recycled products.
Climate impact from IT is a blind spot for Swedish companies
A majority of the Swedish respondents (38 percent answered no, 25 percent answered don’t know) do not know the carbon emissions caused by their IT equipment across its full lifecycle — from production to recycling.
The EU’s CSRD sustainability directive requires companies to report sustainability data in detail, so it is important that IT departments understand their sustainability metrics. Without awareness of how IT drives emissions, it is difficult to reduce them. The survey therefore indicates that Swedish IT departments need further sustainability training to become more aware of their climate footprint and the actions they can take to reduce it.
Few IT departments use refurbished equipment
While just under half of companies send used IT equipment for refurbishment, fewer than a third of Swedish companies (31 percent) actually use refurbished equipment in practice. This limits the level of circularity achieved and weakens companies’ sustainability by encouraging repeated purchases of new equipment that demand further extraction of natural resources.
“To reach the level of sustainability the world needs, organizations must lead by example,” says Christer Eklund, Country Manager for Sweden at Lenovo. By choosing refurbished IT equipment or devices made largely from recycled materials, organizations can help create the genuine circularity that the planet and future generations require.
About the survey
The survey was carried out by the opinion and market research firm YouGov. Between February 13 and March 5, a total of 1,859 online interviews were conducted with IT professionals in Sweden (645), Norway (186), Denmark (715) and Finland (313).