Your “waste” tech is someone else’s new computer!
A major public mindset shift is needed to tackle the problem of valuable IT hardware being discarded whilst it still has years of useful life left.
That’s one of the issues we discussed on the GreenIO podcast this month, along with our friends at The Edinburgh Remakery.
When end of life tech – laptops, phones, desktops, monitors and other hardware – is viewed as “waste”, it is treated as worthless. But in fact it is still a valuable asset! Your “waste” is someone else’s new computer, and with too many people in our society digitally excluded, we need those computers!
Thank you to Gaël Duez of GreenIO for inviting us to discuss these issues.
On the podcast we discuss the urgent need to inform organisations about the reuse potential of their end of life tech, and the business benefits of ensuring it safely reaches new users. Both Reusing IT and The Edinburgh Remakery have collected donated hardware from businesses where screens and laptops have been literally thrown into a crate and treated like waste, and are damaged before we have a chance to refurbish them.
We also discuss issues such as the right to repair, the problem with planned obsolescence, the role of Open Source software and how all this relates to the scandalous digital divide in our society.