Sustainability Real progress is being made with respect to bringing


remanufactured products, which will carry the vendor’s own warranty, to market, but here again, there is a lot of work to do before products are available in sufficient quantities to meet wider market demand.


Secure trade-in What partners can offer end-user customers though, is the opportunity to trade-in their old devices and then lean into our capability to safely process for refurbishment or recycle the products, so they don’t end up in landfill. We have been doing this with mobile phones in particular, for a number of years and we expect to be taking an increasing number of laptops back into the circular economy over the next few months. In 2025, as the expected huge wave of Windows 11 upgrades rolls


out, being able to guarantee recycling or reuse of products that the customer no-longer needs will be vitally important. Secure and verifiable erasure of data is an important part of this service – many end customers won’t hand over old technology unless they can be sure that will happen. Te picture is similar when it comes to how the products are


shipped. Most laptops and PCs will have arrived via sea from East Asia and some may have been transported by air freight. Whichever way they came, there will have been a carbon cost. Tis is true not only in IT, but across all industries. For TD Synnex, as a distribution business, it’s a big challenge and I will explain why and outline what we are doing to address it later in this article.


Sustainable credentials Customers are also asking about the sustainability credentials of their suppliers i.e. your business. Tey will want to know what you are doing within your own company (however big or small you might be) about reducing your carbon footprint and moving towards net zero emissions. If you have not already started on this journey, I’d recommend you start as soon as possible. TD Synnex may be able to help you through our Net Zero Academy, which equips partners to set out their own carbon reduction plans. Why am I convinced that customers are going to start asking


about sustainability even more this year? Well, it has been included as a key item in many corporate and public sector ITTs for some time – and that’s not about to change, especially with the news that we are on target to breach 1.5C of warming in 2024, once the final figures are in. We have also noticed that sustainability and carbon impact are


coming up more oſten in discussions with mid-market and smaller customers. And while it’s not always possible to answer all the questions that customers might have on the sustainability credentials of products, it is really important that you can answer questions about your own business and what you are doing to reduce your carbon impact.


No excuses Tere is not really any excuse for not having a plan anymore. Sustainability is something we’ve been focused on in our industry for some time. At TD Synnex UK, we have been working on our own carbon reduction plan for more than two years now. We moved


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our main UK office in Basingstoke into a more sustainable building at the start of 2023 – one that is much more efficient in terms of energy use – and later that year we successfully switched all four of our locations to renewable electricity suppliers. Our experience has been that, once you have made a start you


can make positive changes and reduce your Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions as defined under the Greenhouse Gas Protocol (GGP), almost right away. Respectively, these first two scopes address the direct emissions from sources owned or controlled by your organisation, and the indirect emissions that come from the generation of energy that you buy, such as electricity and gas.


A greater challenge Taking actions to reduce Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions is relatively straightforward, but once you have picked all that low-hanging fruit, it does get harder. You can try to target specific resources or areas, but you are now starting to look in much more detail at the power requirements of devices and identifying times when you can power down servers. Addressing Scope 3 emissions – the indirect emissions that


happen in your value chain, including upstream and downstream deliveries emissions – is a much greater challenge, as much of this will be beyond your control. Most of your Scope 3 emissions will come from third-party couriers and other suppliers, and you will be dependent on them taking action. Until they reduce their emissions, you can’t reduce yours. Obviously, this is a big area for a products distributor like TD SYNNEX and it’s something we’ve been talking to our courier partners about for some time now. For the delivery companies, it’s a question of balancing the


investment they would need to make in electric vehicles (and make use of electricity from renewable sources to charge them), and the practicalities. Large electric delivery vehicles are extremely expensive and can’t be recharged absolutely everywhere around the UK. And the impact that all this would have on the cost of their services would be considerable – that would lead to higher transportation costs, which would ultimately be passed down to the end user customer.


Making progress Progress is being made, but at times it can feel painfully slow. It’s important to note that it’s not only the IT sector, but every industry that is grappling with this particular challenge and it may take some innovative, out-of-the-box thinking before we see significant change here. In the meantime, it’s more important than ever for us to continue


doing everything we can to reduce our own carbon impact. We all know – as organisations and individuals – that we have to do more, we have to make progress on the way that products are made and how they are transported. Sustainability is not going to fade away as an issue – it’s going to


become more prominent in every business conversation and every IT supplier and partner will need to be able to demonstrate that they have a plan to reduce their own impact and be aware of the sustainability credentials of the products they offer. We are ready to help and support partners in any and every way we can to educate themselves about this critical global issue, to build their own carbon reduction plan, and to help customers understand how they can use IT more sustainably.


January/February 2025 | 23


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