Global Head Of Information Technology

Being the World's First Carbon Negative brewery - we remove more carbon from the air than we expend in producing and distributing the world's favourite craft beer - we are very focused on reducing the environmental impact of everything we do.

IT, in that respect, is no different.Coming into an organisation can always be daunting. You want to make a positive impact and fit in with the culture and ethos of the new organisation, so one of the things I have been very conscious of is continuing that environmental legacy in terms of how we,in IT, go about things like sourcing and recycling/re-using kit.

Re-using laptops for homeschooling during the lockdown was one way.A great way to help those in our local community that needed help to keep kids education going when all the schools were closed and extend the usable life of a laptop.A small gesture but one which was gratefully received by families struggling to afford to buy their kids’ laptops to work at home.

From small gestures in the community to the wider impact of technology on the planet, I heard recently that to offset the carbon used in laptops' manufacturing process, you'd have to hold on to it for 26 years!  Not sure if you use Windows machinesyou'd ever be able to upgrade if you held on to it for that long. Also, how many batteries would you need to replace over that period?Perhaps not so much of a worry if your laptop is always plugged in and you are never on the road, but for road warriors battery life is key. Also, can you imagine what a Cyber security and helpdesk nightmare it would be to support a 26-year-old laptop! No patching/unsupported OS/apps eventually.Not exactly a practical option, therefore.

So what’s the best you can do?  At the moment the way we see it is to offset the 26 years figureby using environmentally-friendlyrecycling vendors for the kit that is gone beyond any reusable life. If you are lucky,you may even recoup some money back for reinvestment, if you are lucky!We’vealso managed to save money and mileage by preloading any kit destined for recycling on one of our trucks already making a journey with a beer delivery!It helps when you have a logistics manager who can arrange that of course, and not everyone will have that luxury.

"We all need to be pushing vendors to incorporate more environmentally friendly materials."

For the new kit, we think very carefully with our primaryvendor of choice for computers selected based on howsustainable the products they offer are.Re-using aviation materials or ocean plastic always helps in this, and most vendors are seeing that they can’t drag their heels on this and raising their efforts to incorporate more environmentally friendly materials, and that is great to see. We all need to be pushing vendors to keep improving in that space.  They won’t change if we collectively don’t keep demanding change.

Of course, some of this will come down to how well you manage to track your IT assets.  Basic hygiene with an IT Asset Register is a no brainer to being able to track what you have on estate and therefore how you are going to manage the IT assets.  It will help inform how you get the most use out of them whilst still being able to provide the performance and longevity to do a job for your end-users.

In short, there is no secret sauce to getting this right. It’swhat’s right for you as an organisation. It’s leveraging and pushing your existing vendors to help and try harder. This will get easier industry-wide, but in the meantime keep pushing.  Be the difference.  Be the change.