HPE Financial Services to help customers move towards Circular Economy

HPE Financial Services has announced a new Circular Economy Report that provides IT and sustainability organizations with a tool to estimate and share the carbon, energy and landfill waste savings achieved by returning retired or end-of-use assets to HPE, for processing through HPE Technology Renewal Centers.

Based on deep material science and product manufacturing information, the Circular Economy Report shows a breakdown by category of the products that were refurbished, remarketed and reintroduced into the economy as well and those materials that were put back into the economy as recycled materials. The report can be used by organizations when disclosing their indirect (Scope 3) greenhouse gas emissions to investor and customer-driven disclosures such as the CDP.

Additionally, HPE has announced it has joined the Ellen McArthur Foundation’s CE 100 group – a pre-competitive innovation program established to enable organizations to develop new opportunities and realize their Circular Economy ambitions faster. It brings together enterprises, governments and cities, academic institutions, emerging innovators and affiliates in a unique multi-stakeholder platform.

“A Circular Economy commitment helps IT meet business and sustainability goals, while reducing the world’s growing e-waste problem,” said Irv Rothman, President & CEO, HPE Financial Services. “Our aspiration is to help customers think about their infrastructure in new ways, build strategies to extend and extract value from what they have, and use retired assets to help fund the transition to new infrastructure.”

A Circular Economy reimagines a take-make-dispose system to a circular and regenerative economy. It considers the full product lifecycle: from resource extraction, to product design and use – all the way to end-of-use management to extend product and material life and lower total cost of ownership. From a customer perspective, key drivers for a Circular Economy approach are new sources of business value and infrastructure efficiency. From a sustainability perspective, the need to move to a Circular Economy is driven by a consumption rate that is beyond the earth's ability to replenish.

Applying Circular Economy principles to the IT industry drives a more effective use of products and materials and enables businesses to retire their IT assets in a secure, compliant, and environmentally responsible manner. A recent HPE Financial Services study showed that sustainability is critical, with 79 per cent of companies committing to an environmental sustainability strategy, and 69 per cent specifically having an IT sustainability strategy in place. In addition, 48 per cent of the companies surveyed are highly regulated and must report on environmental impacts.

HPE’s new Circular Economy Report gives customers key information to estimate IT’s contribution to their Sustainability and Environmental Reporting (SER) requirements. It provides an analysis of the re-use to recycling ratio, as well as estimates of savings in energy, materials, greenhouse gas emissions and landfill volume avoided, so customers can track progress toward goals. At the same time, the report shows how through refurbishing and recycling their retired IT products, customers can return value to their business while helping to meet their sustainability goals.