Embracing Innovative Practices To Drive Circularity and Sustainability

Sustainability matters, ensuring the long-term health and well-being of our planet, economy and society. Perhaps surprisingly, there are also other benefits to embracing sustainable initiatives. According to a Capgemini report, 77% of companies say their sustainability initiatives actually increase customer loyalty, for example, and other perks can include lower costs and economic growth.

Circularity can and should play a large role in any sustainability strategy, not only helping to reduce emissions, but also to cut waste and manage resources more effectively. While it can be difficult to know where to start when it comes to sustainability and circularity, we’ve had plenty of experience here at Lenovo.

The growing importance of sustainability

The push for sustainability is largely driven by several key factors. There’s the need to protect the environment, for starters, preserving natural resources and ecosystems. Climate science suggests we need rapid and deep emissions cuts to achieve global net-zero and prevent the most damaging effects of climate change.

We only have one planet and finite resources, making it critical that we look after them. Sustainability can contribute to the well-being of communities, with sustainable practices helping to ensure that resources are available for all. The benefits from a fairer and better society can help to support the general concept of sustainability, making sustainable businesses more attractive to consumers.

This leads us nicely onto the third key factor, which is the economic benefits of sustainability. Not only do sustainable initiatives help when it comes to cutting emissions, managing resources and increasing customer loyalty, they can also lead to economic growth by promoting innovation, efficiency and long-term planning.

Businesses that adopt sustainable practices can see reduced costs through energy savings and waste reduction, while also opening up new markets and opportunities for sustainable technologies and products.

Lenovo’s commitment to sustainability

As such, it’s no surprise that sustainability is hugely important to us here at Lenovo. It’s at the centre of everything we do. That’s why we’re committed to achieving Net-Zero emissions by 2050, and our targets have been validated by SBTi (Science Based Targets initiative).

Our primary strategies to reduce emissions include cutting the environmental impact of our products, harnessing innovation to increase sustainable manufacturing, and decreasing emissions across our entire operations and value chain.

While we’re focussing on the big picture when it comes to sustainability, the smaller details also add up, which is why we’re embracing innovative manufacturing techniques such as soldering at lower temperatures to help conserve energy. Of course, there’s more to sustainability than simply cutting emissions, and we have solutions that can help our customers at every step of their IT sustainability journey.

An innovative approach to the circular economy

Circularity plays a key part when it comes to sustainability, especially for technology. E-waste makes up 70% of overall toxic waste, after all, and only 20% of it is currently formally recycled.

Lenovo is committed to incorporating post-industrial recycled content (PIC) plastics, post-consumer recycled content (PCC) plastics, and closed-loop post-consumer recycled plastics (CL-PCR) into our products, along with introducing new materials such as ocean bound plastics (OBP) and recycled metals.

Designing products to be manufactured from recycled materials not only saves natural resources and energy, but also diverts materials from landfills. We try to design our products to be long-lasting, easily repaired and easily refurbished.

As part of the recycling process, Lenovo’s Asset Recovery Service (ARS) helps to mitigate the environmental and data security risks associated with end-of-life asset disposal, but it’s also worth considering how to extend the lifecycle of existing products.

Our Certified Refurbished solution can help here, giving a second or even third lease of life to devices, which are certified, backed with Lenovo warranty, and offer significant cost savings for customers.

Leveraging AI for sustainability ambitions

Of course, picking the best products, knowing where to start when it comes to your sustainability journey, or even knowing when and where it makes sense to opt for refurbished devices can seem like a daunting task. That’s why we’re also leaning on AI to help our customers to make educated choices.

LISSA (Lenovo Intelligent Sustainability Solutions Advisor) is Lenovo’s internal AI-powered tool, created to help customers make data-driven sustainability choices. LISSA makes it possible to unlock the estimated emissions reductions opportunities across the IT lifecycle from different Lenovo services. By including emissions reductions as part of your IT purchases from the beginning, LISSA helps influence a positive shift from traditional IT procurement to more conscious IT decision making.

We want to put our customers in the driver’s seat, making it easier to choose the preferred pathway to meet their own IT sustainability goals.

An approach that works for you

Perhaps the biggest thing to understand is the fact that every organisation is different. There’s no one-size-fits-all solution, and of course we’re not expecting customers to immediately check every single sustainability box.

By exploring the potential of emission reduction opportunities, making conscious decisions, and implementing circular IT solutions into your tech stack, it’s easier to make inroads into achieving your sustainability ambitions.